Proceedings of The FORS40 Workshop

Mikael Collan, J ari Hmlinen, and Pasi Luukka (Editors)
Proceedings of the Finnish Operations Research

Society 40
th
Anniversary Workshop FORS40

Lappeenranta 20. 21.8.2013

LUT Scientific and Expertise Publications No. 13, 2013
Research Reports - Tutkimusraportit
ISSN-L 2243-3376
ISSN 2243-3376

ISBN 978-952-265-436-6 Electronic publication

Table of Contents

Table of Contents II

Preface IV

Committees V

A Firefly Algorithm-Driven Simulation-Optimization Approach for Waste 1
Management Planning J ulian Scott Yeomans and Xin-She Yang

An Ant Colony Approach for a 2-Stage Vehicle Routing Problem with Probabilistic 5
Demand Increases Nihat Engin Toglu, Vassilis Papanagiotou, Matthias Klumpp, and
Roberto Montemanni

Solution Space Visualization as a Tool for Vehicle Routing Algorithm Development 9
J ussi Rasku, Tommi Krkkinen, and Pekka Hotokka

Computational Intelligence the Key to Optimizing Workforce Management and 13
Professional Sports League Schedules Kimmo Nurmi, J ari Kyngs, and
Nico Kyngs

Utilizing Bzier surface pattern recognition for analyzing military tactics 22
J ari Sormunen and Harri Eskelinen

Sensitivity Analysis in Sequencing Models Yury Nikulin 26

Equilibrium Based Flow Control in Wireless Networks with Moving Users 30
Igor V. Konnov, Erkki Laitinen, and Olga Pinyagina

Economic Growth in a Network under Mutual Dependence of Agents 34
Yury P. Martemyanov and Vladimir D. Matveenko

Multi-expert multi-criteria ranking method that uses scorecards, fuzzy heavy OWA, 38
and similarity measures Pasi Luukka and Mikael Collan

AHP based decision support tool for the evaluation of works of art Registry of 44
Artistic Performances J an Stoklasa and J ana Talasov

Multiple objectives and system constraints in double-deck elevator dispatching 48
J anne Sorsa and Mirko Ruokokoski

Scheduling and Routing in Home Health Care Service Thi Viet Ly Nguyen and 52
Roberto Montemanni

Simulation methods in real option valuation Tero Haahtela 58

A Practical Analytical Model for Valuing Early Stage Investments Using Real 62
Options Yuri Lawryshin

Mapping Real Option Valuation Model Types to Different Types of Uncertainty 68
Mikael Collan and Tero Haahtela

A Credibilistic Approach to Risk Aversion and Prudence Irina Georgescu and 72
J ani Kinnunen

Estimating the potential impact of efficiency improvement in reducing nutrient 78
Emissions Natalia Kuosmanen and Timo Kuosmanen

A model for estimating and visualizing duration and time evolution of capability 82
through decision points Juha-Pekka Nikkarila and J uhani Hmlinen

Utilizing sensitivity analysis and data filtering processes to support overall optimizing 86
and decision making models in military tactics

A First Approach to the Optimization of Bogots TransMilenio BRT System 94
Francisco J . Pea, Antonio J imnez, and Alfonso Mateos

Optimization in Smallholders Agricultural Farm: A Case of Goat Rearing in 105
Malaysia Mohd Sahar Sauian and Norfarhanah Che Othman

Preface

This proceedings is the official publication of the Finnish Operations Research Society
(FORS) 40
th
Anniversary Workshop. The focus of the workshop was decision-making and
optimization and the proceedings includes twenty peer-reviewed papers that reflect the focus
well.

We wish to thank all the contributors to the workshop and especially thank the workshop
keynote speakers: professors Christer Carlsson, Raimo Hmlinen, Carlos Coello Coello,
J ulian Scott Yeomans, Yuri Lawryshyn, and Roberto Montemanni.

In addition to the workshop a doctoral consortium is connected to the workshop, where four
experts: Christer Carlsson, J ulian Scott Yeomans, Yuri Lawryshyn, and Gabor J aniga share
their views on some actual topics. Again thank you for your contribution.

The workshop and/or the doctoral consortium is supported by EURO, Tieteellisten Seurojen
Valtuuskunta, FORS, and Lappeenrannan Teknillinen Yliopisto (LUT). The organizers thank
the aforementioned for their support.

We hope that you will enjoy the workshop and wish you a pleasant stay in the city of
Lappeenranta and at the Lappeenranta University of Technology.

Prof. Mikael Collan
FORS40 Local Organizing Committee Chair
FORS40 Scientific Committee Co-Chair

Prof. Jari Hmlinen
FORS40 Scientific Committee Chair

Prof. Pasi Luukka
FORS40 Local Organizing Committee Co-Chair

Local Organizing Committee:

Mikael Collan, LUT, Finland (Chair), J ari Hmlinen, LUT, Finland (Co-chair), Pasi
Luukka, LUT, Finland (Co-chair)

International Scientific Programme Committee:

J ari Hmlinen, LUT, Finland (Chair); Mikael Collan, LUT, Finland, (Co-chair, FORS);
Timo Kuosmanen, Aalto U. & President of FORS, Finland (Co-chair); Pasi Luukka, LUT,
Finland; Mario Fedrizzi, U. Trento, Italy; Yuri Lawryshyn, U. Toronto, Canada; Christer
Carlsson, bo Akademi, Finland; J orma K. Mattila, LUT, Finland; J ozsef Mezei, bo
Akademi, Finland; Tomas Eklund, bo Akademi, Finland; Kalevi Kylheiko, LUT, Finland;
Sheraz Ahmed, LUT, Finland; Farhad Hassanzadeh, U. North Carolina, USA; J ulian Scott
Yeomans, U. , Canada; Markku Heikkil, bo Akademi, Finland; Ahti Salo, Aalto U.,
Finland; Kaisa Miettinen, U. J yvskyl, Finland; J anne Sorsa, Kone Corporation, Finland;
Osmo Kuusi, U. Turku, Finland; Osmo J auri, Model IT Ltd., Finland; Roberto Montemanni,
IDSIA, Switzerland; Robert Fullr, Obuda U., Hungary; J ouni Lampinen, U. Vaasa, Finland;
J ukka Hallikas, LUT, Finland; Satu Viljainen, LUT, Finland; Iulian Nastac, Politehnica U.,
Romania
A Firefly Algorithm-Driven Simulation-Optimization
Approach for Waste Management Planning

Julian Scott Yeomans
OMIS Area, Schulich School of Business
York University, 4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3 Canada
syeomans@schulich.yorku.ca
Xin-She Yang
Department of Design Engineering and Mathematics
Middlesex University, Hendon Campus
London NW4 4BT, UK
xy227@cam.ac.uk

Abstract Many environmental decision-making applications
contain considerable elements of stochastic uncertainty.
Simulation-optimization is a family of optimization techniques
that incorporates stochastic uncertainties expressed as
probability distributions directly into its computational
procedure. Simulation-optimization techniques can be adapted to
model a wide variety of problem types in which system
components are stochastic. In this paper, a new simulation-
optimization approach is considered that implements a modified
version of the computationally efficient, biologically-inspired
Firefly Algorithm. The efficacy of this stochastic Firefly
Algorithm-driven simulation-optimization procedure for
environmental decision-making purposes is demonstrated using a
municipal solid waste management case study.
Keywords Simulation-Optimization, Biologically-inspired
Metaheuristic Algorithms, Firefly Algorithm
I. INTRODUCTION
Environmental decision-making frequently involves
complex problems possessing design requirements which are
very difficult to incorporate into any supporting modelling
formulations [1-6]. Environmental policy formulation can
prove even more complicated because the various system
components often also contain considerable stochastic
uncertainty [7-9]. Numerous ancillary deterministic
mathematical modelling methods have been introduced to
support the environmental policy formulation endeavour
[2,4,10]. As most environmental systems contain stochastic
uncertainty, deterministic solution approaches can be rendered
relatively unsuitable for most environmental policy
implementations [4,7,10-14]. Consequently, environmental
policy determination proves to be an extremely challenging and
complicated undertaking [5,9].
Yeomans et al. [15] incorporated stochastic uncertainty
directly into environmental planning using an approach
referred to as simulation-optimization (SO). SO is a family of
optimization techniques that incorporates inherent stochastic
uncertainties expressed as probability distributions directly into
its computational procedure [16-18]. Yeomans [8,19] has
shown that SO can be considered an effective, though
computationally intensive, optimization technique for
environmental policy formulation.
In this paper, a new stochastic SO approach is presented
that efficiently generates solutions by implementing a
stochastic version of the biologically-inspired Firefly
Algorithm (FA) of Yang [20-21]. For calculation and
optimization purposes, Yang [21] demonstrated that the FA is
considerably more computationally efficient than such
commonly-used metaheuristic procedures as genetic
algorithms, simulated annealing, and enhanced particle swarm
optimization [22-23]. The efficacy of this approach for
environmental decision-making purposes is demonstrated using
the municipal solid waste management (MSW) application
taken from [15].
II. FIREFLY ALGORITHM FOR FUNCTION OPTIMIZATION
While this section supplies only a relatively brief synopsis
of the FA procedure, more detailed explanations can be
accessed in [20-21,23]. The FA is a biologically-inspired,
population-based metaheuristic. Each firefly in the population
represents one potential solution to a problem and the
population of fireflies should initially be distributed uniformly
and randomly throughout the solution space. The solution
approach employs three idealized rules. (i) The brightness of a
firefly is determined by the overall landscape of the objective
function. Namely, for a maximization problem, the brightness
is simply considered to be proportional to the value of the
objective function. (ii) The relative attractiveness between any
two fireflies is directly proportional to their respective
brightness. This implies that for any two flashing fireflies, the
less bright firefly will always be inclined to move towards the
brighter one. However, attractiveness and brightness both
decrease as the relative distance between the fireflies increases.
If there is no brighter firefly within its visible neighborhood,
then the particular firefly will move about randomly. (iii) All
fireflies within the population are considered unisex, so that
any one firefly could potentially be attracted to any other
firefly irrespective of their sex. Based upon these three rules,
the basic operational steps of the FA can be summarized within
the pseudo-code of Figure 1 [21].
1
Proceedings of FORS40 - 2013 Lappeenranta, Finland - ISBN 9789522654366
Figure 1: Pseudo Code of the Firefly Algorithm

Objective Function F(X), X = (x
1
, x
2
, x
d
)
Generate the initial population of n fireflies, X
i
, i = 1, 2,, n
Light intensity I
i
at X
i
is determined by F(X
i
)
Define the light absorption coefficient
while (t < MaxGeneration)
for i = 1: n , all n fireflies
for j = 1: n ,all n fireflies (inner loop)
if (I
i
< I
j
), Move firefly i towards j; end if
Vary attractiveness with distance r via e
- r

end for j
end for i
Rank the fireflies and find the current global best solution G
*

end while
Postprocess the results
III. AN FA-DRIVEN SIMULATION-OPTIMIZATION APPROACH
FOR STOCHASTIC OPTIMIZATION
As described earlier, SO is a family of optimization
techniques that incorporates stochastic uncertainties expressed
as probability distributions directly into its computational
procedure [16-18]. While SO holds considerable potential for
application to a wide range of stochastic problems, it cannot be
considered universally effective due to its accompanying
solution time issues [16-17]. Yeomans [19] examined several
approaches to accelerate the search times and solution quality
of SO.
Suppose the mathematical representation of an optimization
problem contains n decision variables,
i
X , expressed in vector
form as X = [
1
X ,
2
X ,,
n
X ]. If the objective function is
represented by F and the problems feasible region is given by
D, then the related mathematical programming problem is to
optimize F(X) subject to X e D. When stochastic conditions
exist, values for the constraints and objective can often only be
efficiently estimated by simulation. Thus, any solution
comparison between two distinct decisions X1 and X2
necessitates the evaluation of some statistic of F modelled with
X1 to the same statistic modelled with X2 [8,16]. These
statistics are calculated by a simulation performed on the
solutions, in which each candidate solution provides the
decision variable settings in the simulation. While simulation
presents the mechanism for comparing results, it does not
provide the means for determining optimal solutions to
problems. Hence, simulation, alone, cannot be used as a
stochastic optimization procedure.
SO is a broadly defined set of solution approaches that
combine simulation with some type of optimization method for
stochastic optimization [16]. In SO, all unknown objective
functions, constraints, and parameters are replaced by one or
more discrete event simulation models in which the decision
variables provide the settings under which the simulation is
performed. Since all measures of system performance are
stochastic, every potential solution, X, examined would
necessarily need to be evaluated via simulation. As simulation
is computationally intensive, an optimization component is
employed to guide the solution search through the problems
feasible region using as few simulation runs as possible [8,18].
Because stochastic system problems contain many possible
solutions, solution quality can be highly variable unless an
extensive search has been performed throughout the problems
entire feasible domain. Population-based heuristic methods
such as the FA are conducive to these extensive searches
because the complete set of candidate solutions maintained in
their populations permit searches to be undertaken throughout
multiple sections of the feasible region, concurrently.
An FA-directed SO approach consists of two alternating
computational phases; (i) an evolutionary phase guided by
the optimization method and (ii) a simulation module. The
evolutionary phase considers the entire population of solutions
during each generation of the search and evolves from a current
population to a subsequent one. Because of the systems
stochastic components, all performance measures are statistics
calculated from the responses generated in the simulation
module. The quality of each solution in the population is found
by having its performance criterion, F, evaluated by simulation.
After simulating each candidate solution, the respective fitness
values are returned to the optimization module to be utilized in
the creation of the next generation of candidate solutions. In
[15] a genetic algorithm (GA) was employed in optimization
phase while in this paper the more computationally efficient
FA is used for directing the optimization.
One primary principle of an FA is that better (i.e. fitter)
solutions in the current population possess a greater likelihood
for survival and progression into the subsequent generation.
The new FA module evolves the system toward improved
solutions in subsequent populations and ensures that the
solution search does not become fixated at some local optima.
After generating a new candidate solution set in the FA
module, the new population is returned to the simulation
module for comparative evaluation. This alternating, two-phase
search process terminates when an appropriately stable system
state (i.e. an optimal solution) has been attained.
IV. CASE STUDY OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE
MANAGEMENT PLANNING
The efficacy of this new FA-driven SO procedure will be
illustrated using the municipal solid waste management
planning study of Hamilton-Wentworth taken from [15]. While
this section briefly outlines the case, more extensive details and
the complete mathematical model can be found in [15,24].
Located at the Western-most edge of Lake Ontario, the
Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth covers an area of 1,100
square kilometers and includes six towns and cities; Hamilton,
Dundas, Ancaster, Flamborough, Stoney Creek, and
Glanbrook. The Municipality is considered the industrial centre
of Canada, although it simultaneously incorporates diverse
areas of not only heavy industrial production, but also densely
populated urban space, regions of significant suburban
development, and large proportions of rural/agricultural
environments. Prior to the study of [15], the municipality had
not been able to effectively incorporate inherent uncertainties
into their planning processes and, therefore, had not performed
effective systematic planning for the flow of wastes within the
region. The MSW management system within the region is a
2
very complicated process which is impacted by economic,
technical, environmental, legislational and political factors.
The MSW system within Hamilton-Wentworth needed to
satisfy the waste disposal requirements of its half-million
residents who, collectively, produced more than 300,000 tons
of waste per year, with a budget of $22 million. The region had
constructed a system to manage these wastes composed of: a
waste-to-energy incinerator referred to as the Solid Waste
Reduction Unit (or SWARU); a 550 acre landfill site at
Glanbrook; three waste transfer stations located in Dundas
(DTS), in East Hamilton at Kenora (KTS), and on Hamilton
Mountain (MTS); a household recycling program contracted to
and operated by the Third Sector Employment Enterprises; a
household/hazardous waste depot, and; a backyard composting
program.
The three transfer stations have been strategically located to
receive wastes from the disparate municipal (and individual)
sources and to subsequently transfer them to the waste
management facilities for final disposal; either to SWARU for
incineration or to Glanbrook for landfilling. Wastes received at
the transfer stations are compacted into large trucks prior to
being hauled to the landfill site. These transfer stations provide
many advantages in waste transportation and management;
these include reducing traffic going to and from the landfill,
providing an effective control mechanism for dumping at the
landfill, offering an inspection area where wastes can be
viewed and unacceptable materials removed, and contributing
to a reduction of waste volume because of the compaction
process. The SWARU incinerator burns up to 450 tons of
waste per day and, by doing so, generates about 14 million
kilowatt hours per year of electricity which can be either used
within the plant itself or sold to the provincial electrical utility.
SWARU also produces a residual waste ash which must
subsequently be transported to the landfill for disposal.
Within this MSW system, decisions have to be made
regarding whether waste materials would be recycled,
landfilled or incinerated and additional determinations have to
be made as to which specific facilities would process the
discarded materials. Included within these decisions is a
determination of which one of the multiple possible pathways
that the waste would flow through in reaching the facilities.
Conversely, specific pathways selected for waste material
flows determine which facilities process the waste. It was
possible to subdivide the various waste streams with each
resulting substream sent to a different facility. Since cost
differences from operating the facilities at different capacity
levels produced economies of scale, decisions have to be made
to determine how much waste should be sent along each flow
pathway to each facility. Therefore, any single MSW policy
option is composed of a combination of many decisions
regarding which facilities received waste material and what
quantities of waste are sent to each facility. All of these
decisions are compounded by overriding system uncertainties.
Yeomans et al. [15] examined three likely future scenarios
for the Municipality, with each scenario involving potential
incinerator operations. Scenario 1 considered the existing
MSW management system and corresponded to a status quo
case. Scenario 2 examined what would occur should the
incinerator operate at its upper design capacity; corresponding
to a situation in which the municipality would landfill as little
waste as possible. Scenario 3 permitted the incinerator to
operate anywhere in its design capacity range; from being
closed completely to operating up to its maximum capacity.
Yeomans et al. [15] ran GA-directed SO for a 24-hour period
to determine best solutions for each scenario representing a
10% savings from the Municipal budget. For the existing
system (Scenario 1), a solution that would never cost more than
$20.6 million was constructed. For Scenarios 2 and 3,
Yeomans et al. [15] produced optimal solutions costing $22.1
million and $18.7 million, respectively.
The new FA-driven SO procedure was run on the various
scenarios of the MSW problem generating the objective values
shown in Table 1. Table 1 clearly indicates how the solutions
produced by the new procedure are all identical with respect to
their best overall cost measurements relative to the optimal
solutions found in [15] for each scenario. However, this FA-
driven procedure was able to generate these results in minutes
as opposed to the 24-hours required in the early
experimentation representing a major computational
improvement.
TABLE I. BEST ANNUAL MSW PERFORMANCE COSTS (IN MILLIONS OF
$) FOUND FOR (I) EXISTING SYSTEM STRUCTURE (SCENARIO 1), (II)
INCINERATOR AT MAXIMUM OPERATING (SCENARIO 2), AND (III)
INCINERATOR AT ANY OPERATING LEVEL (SCENARIO 3)

Scenario
1
Scenario
2
Scenario
3
Yeomans et al. [15]

20.6

22.1

18.7
Best Solution Found
Using FA-driven SO

20.6

22.1

18.7

V. CONCLUSIONS
Environmental decision-making problems generally
possess performance specifications whose complexity are
invariably compounded by stochastic uncertainties. Therefore,
any ancillary modelling techniques used to support the decision
formulation process must somehow be flexible enough to
encapsulate the impacts from the inherent planning and
stochastic uncertainties. In this paper, a stochastic FA-driven
SO approach was introduced that demonstrated that (i) an FA
can be effectively employed as the underlying optimization
search routine for SO procedures and (ii) this approach is very
computationally efficient. Since FA techniques can be adapted
to solve a wide variety of real world problem types, the
practicality of this new FA-driven stochastic SO approach can
clearly be extended into numerous disparate applications and
can be readily adapted to satisfy numerous other planning
situations. These extensions will become the focus of future
research.

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3
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4
An Ant Colony Approach for a 2-Stage Vehicle
Routing Problem with Probabilistic Demand
Increases
Nihat Engin Toklu
, Vassilis Papapanagiotou
, Matthias Klumpp
, Roberto Montemanni
IDSIA, Dalle Molle Institute for Articial Intelligence

USI-SUPSI, Manno-Lugano, Switzerland
Email: engin, vassilis, roberto@idsia.ch
ild, Institute for Logistics and Service Management

FOM University of Applied Sciences
Leimkugelstrae 6, D-45141 Essen, Germany
Email: Matthias.Klumpp@fom-ild.de
AbstractIn this paper a 2-Stage Vehicle Routing Problem
with Probabilistic Demand Increases is presented. We consider
a simple good delivery problem where we have a retailer and
many customers. The number of vehicles and the routes to use
to satisfy the demands of the customers have to be optimized.
The demands of the customers can probabilistically increase
when the tours have started already, as it is many times the
case in a realistic environment, where unexpected events happen.
In such a case additional vehicles have to be sent out to cover
the unserviced demand (second stage). We describe a heuristic
algorithm based on the Ant Colony System paradigm and we
show how different implementation of the method empirically
perform on some benchmark instances. In particular, it is shown
how the implementation explicitly considering the two stages of
the problem produces better results.
I. INTRODUCTION
In this paper we examine the case of a 2-Stage Vehicle
Routing Problem with probabilistic demand increases. In this
problem we consider the case of a company that needs to serve
multiple customers with demands and has to decide the routes
and number of vehicles needed to serve the customers. The
objective is to minimize the total distance traveled.
The number of vehicles and the routes that the companies
decide to use to satisfy their customers have economic and
environmental impacts, which are directly related to the dis-
tance covered by the vehicles, and the number of vehicles used
itself.
Additionally, in this version of the problem the company
accounts for probabilistic increases in the demands of the cus-
tomers. The situation of probabilistic increases in the demand
arises in many real situations one of which is caused due to
the bullwhip effect.
The supply chain adverse effect known as bullwhip effect
has been documented in research many times for more than
fty years [1], [2]. The bullwhip effect or the Forrester
effect refers to the fact that even small increases in demand
can cause an all the more bigger and abrupt change as one
looks further back in the supply chain.
The problem of servicing a number of customers with a
eet of vehicles is known as the Vehicle Routing Problem
(VRP). In VRP usually there is a central depot of goods that
must be delivered to customers that have placed orders for
such goods. The objective of VRP is to minimize the cost of
distributing the goods.
A related version of VRP is the Capacitated Vehicle Rout-
ing Problem (CVRP). In the classical version of the problem
of CVRP, we assume that there is a depot of a product, we
have customers with certain demands and a limited number of
vehicles each with a limited carrying capacity to satisfy the
demands of the customers. The goal is to route the vehicles
to the customers with minimal travel costs. We assume that
the capacity of one (single) vehicle is always greater than the
demand of a single customer.
An even more related problem to the one presented in
this paper is the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with
Stochastic Demands (VRPSD). In VRPSD where the demands
are stochastic, the actual demand of the customer is revealed
when the vehicle arrives at the customer location. Before
the vehicle leaves the depot, its route has been predened
according to a feasible permutation of the customers, called
a priori tour. In the classical VRPSD the vehicle, while
following the a priori tour, has to choose whether to proceed
to the next customer or return to the depot for restocking.
In this paper we propose a variant of VRPSD where
demands can be increased with some probability. Additionally,
the vehicles are lled to their capacity and always proceed
to serve the customers without deviating from their planned
routes. If a vehicle gets empty without having served all the
demands of the customers, then a new vehicle begins from
the depot to serve the remaining demands of the customers,
by following a newly calculated tour. This procedure can be
repeated until all the demands of the customers are met.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section II
5
lists the works reported in the literature which are related to
our study. Section III provides a detailed denition of the
studied problem. In section IV, our proposed metaheuristic
algorithm for solving the problem is explained. Section V lists
the experimental results obtained by our algorithm. Finally, the
conclusions are drawn in section VI.
II. RELATED WORK
The Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands has
been researched before in a number of papers but to the extend
of our knowledge with different assumptions to our variant.
Whenever not mentioned below, it is assumed that the VRPSD
solved is the classical one.
In [3], the difference in assumptions is that the vehicle
returns periodically to the depot to empty its current load.
Uncertainty is handled by building an a priori sequence
among all customers of minimal expected length. Also simple
heuristics are proposed and theoretical investigations are per-
formed. In [4] simulated annealing is used to solve VRPSD.
In [5] an exact algorithm for the VRPSD is proposed by
formulating it as a two stage problem and solving the second
stochastic integer program using an integer L-shaped method.
In [6] different hybrid metaheuristics are analyzed in terms
of performance and compared to state of the art algorithms.
This paper also uses the notion of preventive restocking.
Preventive restocking means that the vehicle chooses to go to
the depot for restocking even though it is not empty and can
satisfy the next customer. In [7] an Ant Colony Optimization
is proposed called neighborhood-search embedded Adaptive
Ant Algorithm (ns-AAA) in order to solve VRPSD. The
VRPSD solved in this paper has the assumptions of the
classical VRPSD and also uses preventive restocking. In [8]
a multiobjective version of VRPSD is solved by means of
evolutionary methods. The algorithm nds tradeoff solutions
of complete routing schedules with minimum travel distance,
driver remuneration and number of vehicles, with constraints
such as time windows and vehicle capacity. In [9] duration
constraints are imposed on the expected delivery costs and
this affects the structure of the set of a priori tours.
III. PROBLEM DEFINITION
Let G = (L, A) be a graph with L being a set of locations
and A a set of arcs connecting the L vertices. We assume that
the graph is complete and in the set of locations 0 is always
the depot. We also let V be the set of vehicles available for
delivery and c
ij
is the cost of traveling from location i to
location j.
In order to deal with probabilistic increases in the demands,
we generate various scenarios and in each of them the demands
are perturbed in various ways. We let S be the set of scenarios
considered, that are sampled according to a Monte Carlo
technique, and d
s
i
the demand in location i in scenario s S.
Our objective is to nd a feasible solution x that minimizes
the total travel distance and therefore also the total carbon
dioxide emission. We let x
v
be the route decided for vehicle
v V in x, [x
v
[ the length of the route x
v
, and x
v
k
the k-th
visited place of the vehicle v in x.
In case the initial vehicle runs out of capacity, a new one
begins from the depot to satisfy the remaining demands of the
clients. The new vehicle calculates a new route using nearest
neighborhood heuristic (NNH) (see [10]).
To evaluate the nal cost we rst evaluate the cost ignoring
uncertainty which we call base cost. Then we simulate the
route for all scenarios taking into account uncertainty and
return the average of the cost computed. We call this the
x function and it is computed in the objective function by
the term

sS
(
F
s
(x)
|S|
). F
s
(x) is the additional cost due to
stochasticity in scenario s.
To sum up, our problem can be expressed as:
min
_
vV
|x
v
|1
k=1
(c
ij
[i = x
v
k
, j = x
v
k+1
) +
sS
(
F
s
(x)
[S[
)
_
(1)
subject to
x
v
1
= x
v
|x
v
|
= 0 v V
x
v
k
,= x
v
x
v, v
V
k, k
2, ..., [x
v
[ 1
k ,= k
if v = v
x
v
k
(L0) v V, k 2, ..., [x
v
[ 1
k{2,...,|x
v
|1}
d
x
v
k
Q V V
The x function F
s
(x) can be explained as simulating
the solution x over scenario s, getting a list of unsatised
customers, heuristically nding tours for the extra vehicle(s)
by using NNH to revisit the unsatised customers, and nally
returning the total cost of these tours. The algorithmic expla-
nation is as follows:
function F
s
(x) is:
unsatisfied customers []
for all v V do
serving capacity vehicle capacity
for all k 2, ..., [x
v
[ 1 do
if serving capacity d
s
i
then
serving capacity serving capacity d
s
i
else
add k to unsatisfied customers
missing
k
d
s
i
serving capacity
serving capacity 0
end if
end for
end for
SubGraph 0 unsatisfied customers
SubV RP VRP problem on SubGraph where
the demands are given by missing
k
k SubGraph
y solve SubV RP via nearest neighbour heuristic
return travel cost of y
IV. ANT COLONY SYSTEM
The Ant Colony Optimization algorithm (ACO) rst pro-
posed in [11] and [12], is a probabilistic technique for nd-
ing solutions to difcult combinatorial optimization problems
which can be reduced to nding good paths through graphs like
the traveling salesman problem (TSP) or the Vehicle Routing
Problem (VRP).
6
The basic idea of applying ACO to the proposed problem
of this paper is as follows. We have a number of articial
ants that walk on the graph G = (L, A) and each one
constructs a solution. The initial ants wander randomly. When
they have constructed a solution articial pheromones trails
are laid down that indicate the arcs they have walked on.
The amount of articial pheromones depends on the quality
of the generated solution. Over time, pheromone trails start
to evaporate. A shorter path suffers less from evaporation
because it gets marched over more frequently and the amount
of articial pheromone on it becomes higher. The mechanism
of pheromone evaporation helps avoiding early convergence to
local optima and if it did not exist, the paths chosen by the
rst ants would be excessively attractive.
Subsequent ants walking on the graph to nd new solutions
when they encounter a pheromone trail, they are more likely
to follow the arcs with higher amounts of pheromone left.
There is, however, a smaller probability that the ant will follow
other arcs too. We repeat this procedure iteratively and due to
the pheromone amount increase in the arcs belonging to good
solutions, it can be observed that the ants converge to a near-
optimal heuristic solution.
In this study, we use the ant colony system approach, an
elitist ant colony optimization variation. In this context, elitism
means that only ants that improve the currently known best
solution are allowed to lay down new pheromones. The main
consequence of elitism is that ants mainly apply local searches
around the best solutions.
In this paper, for the implementation, the ant colony system
described in [13] is used. Firstly, the algorithm is initialized by
using NNH. The best solution of NNH is stored in a variable
called best. Then, a new ant colony is generated with ants.
The cost of the new solution is evaluated by the objective
function found in section 1. If it is better than the one in the
variable best, then our new solution is stored to the variable
best. Then iteratively we repeat the procedure of generating a
new ant colony and constructing new solutions until a nishing
criterion is met.
In order to generate new solutions, an individual ant starts
by picking locations to visit for the rst vehicle, step by
step. We consider that the rst location picked is always
location 0 which is the depot. Next, it picks a new location
from the set of visitable locations. A customer locations is
visitable if it is not already visited, it is reachable from the
current location and if adding it does not violate the capacity
constraint. We assume the ant is now on the location i and
wants to go to a visitable location j. In order to pick j,
the ant is inuenced by the pheromone left on the arc (i, j)
expressed by
i,j
. To quantify the inuence more denitions
need to be made. We consider N
w
to be the set of visitable
locations for ant w, d
ij
the distance between locations i, j,
ij
=
1
d
ij
indicating the proximity of the two locations; is a
parameter which determines the importance of proximity and
nally [0; 1] determines the probability for an ant to decide
between exploitation and exploration. Thus, an ant located in
i with probability chooses to do exploitation and picks its
next location j by following the arc (i, j) which maximizes
ij
[
ij
]
. Otherwise, with probability 1 , it decides to do

exploration. In this case, the probability of visiting location
TABLE I. THE RESULTS OBTAINED BY USING DIFFERENT APPROACHES
Cost Vehicles
Instance Approach Average StDev Average StDev
tai100a.dat 1-Stage Best-Case 2610.03 58.63 12.02 0.0
1-Stage Average-Case 2267.09 30.64 13.44 0.04
1-Stage Worst-Case 2371.36 39.19 14.04 0.01
tai100b.dat 1-Stage Best-Case 2413.99 40.63 12.0 0.0
1-Stage Worst-Case 2175.77 33.13 13.04 0.02
tai100c.dat 1-Stage Best-Case 1782.81 73.53 12.0 0.0
1-Stage Worst-Case 1618.03 21.02 13.03 0.01
tai100d.dat 1-Stage Best-Case 1954.59 87.44 12.0 0.0
1-Stage Worst-Case 1747.73 20.1 13.02 0.01
tai150a.dat 1-Stage Best-Case 3793.40 55.12 16.23 0.04
1-Stage Worst-Case 3693.16 47.81 18.09 0.01
tai150b.dat 1-Stage Best-Case 3545.05 72.52 15.16 0.13
1-Stage Worst-Case 3356.87 106.8 17.07 0.01
tai150c.dat 1-Stage Best-Case 3391.10 51.72 15.69 0.02
1-Stage Worst-Case 2946.34 94.12 17.29 0.65
tai150d.dat 1-Stage Best-Case 3359.90 107.83 15.14 0.05
1-Stage Worst-Case 3061.22 33.01 17.08 0.01
j is: p
w
ij
= (
ij
[
ij
]
)/(
N
w
ij
[
ij
]
) if j N
w
;
0 otherwise. In the present work parameters of the algorithm
are set to the values suggested in [13]. For a more detailed
description of the algorithm, the reader is addressed to [13].
Multiple approaches can be derived from the basic ant
colony system to solve our problem, by implementing various
objective functions which approximate our main objective (1).
These approaches are as follows:
1-Stage Best-Case Approach: This approach ignores the
probabilistic increases in the demands and solves the problem
only by considering the base cost in the objective function
of the ant colony system. In other words, it assumes that the
customer demands are not increased, and then it treats the
problem as a regular CVRP.
1-Stage Average-Case Approach: Like the previous ap-
proach, this approach treats the problem as a regular CVRP,
except that each customer demand is assumed to be equal to its
lowest possible value plus the expected value of the probability
distribution of its related demand increase.
1-Stage Worst-Case Approach: This approach also treats
the problem as a regular CVRP. Each customer demand is
assumed to be equal to its lowest possible value plus 2 times
the standard deviation of the probability distribution of its
related demand increase.
2-Stage Average-Case Approach: This approach treats the
problem as a 2-Stage problem, where in the rst stage the
original demand is considered. For the second stage a single
scenario, where each demand increase is assumed to be equal
to the expected value of its related probability distribution, is
considered. In this way the behavior of a real planner, facing
the realization of uncertainty, is simulated.
7
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
In this section, we present our experimental results. For
testing our approach, we used the Capacitated Vehicle Routing
Problem instances provided in [14], namely, tai100a,b,c,d
and tai150a,b,c,d, which are instances considering 100
customers and 150 customers, respectively. Note that, these
instances were originally created for the classical CVRP where
the demands are deterministic. Since, in this study, we consider
that there are probabilistic increases in the demands, we mod-
ied these instances. In more details, within each considered
problem instance, for each customer location i (L0), the
following modications were applied:
accept the demand at location i as the base demand d
i
generate a random number r within [0; d
i
R] where R is
a parameter that we set as 0.2 in our studies
declare that the demand at location i is stochastic according
to the half-gaussian distribution, with the base demand d
i
and
standard deviation r. Each ant colony system implementation
was implemented in C and executed on a computer with Intel
Core 2 Duo P9600 @ 2.66GHz processor with 4GB RAM.
Each ant colony system implementation was executed on
the considered modied instances. Over 9 runs (each run taking
3 minutes), the average costs and the standard deviations
(StDev) are reported in table I. In the table, the costs are
calculated according to the objective function (1) with 10000
random scenarios sampled in a Monte Carlo fashion. This
should provide a good approximation of the expected real
situation. In the results, it can be seen that, in general, the
2-Stage Average-Case Approach nds solutions with shorter
travel times and with minimized number of vehicles. Solutions
with even shorter travel times can be provided by the 1-
Stage Average-Case Approach, but these solutions require
more vehicles, and this usually has a very bad impact on
the total cost of the solution for the company. When we
analyze the solutions of the other approaches, we see that:
the 1-Stage Best-Case approach tends to provide expensive
solutions, and is clearly dominated (ignoring uncertainty is
not convenient); the 1-Stage Worst-Case approach provides
over-protective solutions where too many vehicles are required.
In conclusion, the results show that explicitly taking into
account the two stages of the optimization inside the algorithm
is convenient and leads to more desirable solutions, even
when a very simple, polynomial-time heuristic is used for the
optimization of the second stage (as in our case).
VI. CONCLUSIONS
A 2-Stage vehicle routing problem with probabilistic de-
mand increases was discussed, where in the rst stage the
vehicles head out from the depot to satisfy the base demands
of the customers and in the second stage extra vehicles are
sent again to the customers who were not completely satised
because of the dynamic increases in the demands. Various ant
colony optimization approaches were proposed to solve the
problem heuristically. From the experiments it was seen that
on the problems considered adopting a 2-Stages algorithm
that more closely sticks to the reality, produces more attractive
solutions from an economical point of view.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
N.E. T. was funded by the Swiss National Science Founda-
tion through project 200020-140315/1: Robust Optimization
II: applications and theory, and by Hasler through project
13002: Matheuristic approaches for robust optimization. V.
P. was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
through project 200020-134675/1: New sampling-based meta-
heuristics for Stochastic Vehicle Routing Problems II.
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L. Paquete, O. Rossi-Doria, and T. Schiavinotto, Hybrid metaheuristics
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E. Taillard, and G. Agazzi, New Ideas in Opti-
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Accessed June 2013.
8
Solution Space Visualization as a Tool for
Vehicle Routing Algorithm Development
Jussi Rasku
, Tommi K arkk ainen
and Pekka Hotokka
Department of Mathematical Information Technology,

University of Jyv askyl a, P.O. Box 35, FI-40014, Finland
Email: jussi.rasku, pekka.hotokka, tommi.karkkainen@jyu.
AbstractUnderstanding the exploration of search space of
vehicle routing problems is important in designing efcient
algorithms. These spaces are multidimensional and hard to
visualize, which makes it difcult to examine the trajectories of
the search. We use a technique based on multidimensional scaling
to visualize objective function surfaces for such problems. The
technique is used to examine a full objective function surface of
small VRP and TSP problem instances, and the neighbourhood
as observed by heuristic search algorithms.
I. INTRODUCTION
Combinatorial optimization problems are usually inher-
ently multidimensional. For example, the well known travelling
salesman problem (TSP) has n
2
binary decision variables,
where n is the number of cities to visit. Understanding,
let alone visualising such solution spaces is challenging. A
visualization technique that could plot the trajectory of an
algorithm in search space would be a useful tool for algorithm
developers (Halim and Lau, 2007).
In this study we present a visualisation technique based on
multidimensional scaling (MDS). We address the limitations
and challenges of the presented technique, such as the de-
nition of the distance metric between solutions. We will also
show how to use the presented visualization technique to depict
two well known routing problems, the TSP and the capacitated
vehicle routing problem (CVRP). To our knowledge, this is the
rst time this kind of technique is used to make observations
of routing problem solution spaces.
In Section II we give a brief overview to the vehicle routing
problem. In Section III we review previous relevant work on
understanding VRP solution spaces. Section IV describes our
visualization technique and Section V gives examples of the
different landscapes and addresses the accuracy of the method.
We conclude our study in section VI.
II. THE VEHICLE ROUTING PROBLEM
VRP is one of the most studied AT-hard combinatorial
optimization problems (Toth and Vigo, 2002). The task in VRP
is to nd optimal routes for vehicles leaving from a depot to
serve a specied number of requests. In its archetypical form
each customer must be visited once by exactly one vehicle.
Each vehicle must leave from the depot and return there after
serving customers on its route. Typical objective is to minimize
the total length of the routes.
Following Toth and Vigo (2002) a graph formulation for
VRP can be given. Let V = 0, . . . , n be the set of vertices
where the depot has the index 0 and where the indices 1, ..., n
correspond to the customers. The graph G = (V, E) is
complete with each edge e = (i, j) E having an associated
non-negative c
ij
that is the cost of traversal from vertex i to j.
Each of the edges (i, j) E has an adjoining binary decision
variable x
ij
to decide whether traverse the edge. Using the
notation of the graph formulation, a linear programming model
for VRP can be given (Toth and Vigo, 2002).
min
iV
jV
c
ij
x
ij
(1)
s.t.
iV
x
ij
= 1,
iV
x
ji
= 1 j V \ {0} (2)
iV
x
i0
= K,
jV
x
0j
= K (3)
i / S
jS
x
ij
(S) S V \ {0}, S = (4)
x
ij
{0, 1} i, j V (5)
Different routing problem variants can derived by dening
specialized objectives and by adding additional constraints.
Out of these, the most usual one, CVRP is used as an
illustrative example in this work. In CVRP a set of identical
vehicles, with a capacity of C, serve requests with a non-
negative demand of d
i
. The problem is to nd the lowest
cost solution with minimum number of tours K
so that the
capacity C is not exceeded by any of the tours.
III. ON SOLUTION SPACE ANALYSIS
Statistical analysis of tness landscapes has proven to
be useful approach in understanding solution space structure
(Weinberger, 1990). Previous approaches for examining rout-
ing problem search spaces, and observations of thereof, are
explored in e.g. (Fonlupt et al., 1999; Kubiak, 2007; Czech,
2008; Pitzer et al., 2012). These methods involve probing the
solution space in order to calculate statistical measures that
describe the behaviour of the objective function.
These studies have revealed that routing problem search
space is rugged, multimodal and tends to have a big valley
structure where the local optima are clustered close to each
other. Landscape ruggedness describes the expected amount
of local variance of the objective function values around any
given neighbourhood.
9
Halim and Lau (2007) and Mascia and Brunato (2010)
have previously introduced tools that can be used in stochastic
local search (LS) landscape visualization and analysis. The aim
of these studies has been to further the understanding of the
problems. Because of the differences in underlying nature of
combinatorial optimization problems, we argue that problem
structure exploration tools need to be adapted to different
domains.
IV. DESCRIPTION OF THE USED METHOD
Biggest challenge in visualizing the search space of VRP
comes from the multidimensional nature of the problem.
A combinatorial optimization problem, such as VRP, may
have hundreds or thousands of binary decision variables. A
technique called multidimensional scaling (MDS) can be used
to bring the dimensionality down to two or three dimensions.
(Brunato and Battiti, 2010) Following tasks are expected:
(A) Find a solution distance (or dissimilarity) measure.
(B) Implement an effective method of enumerating the solu-
tions for a full search space visualization.
(C) Select the MDS method.
(D) Draw the visualization.
Fig. 1: Visualization process
Problem Instance
Solutions
D
R
Distances
f(x),
Feasibilities
x, y
z, Color
Generator
Dissimilarity
MDS
Feasibility
checker
Objective
function
Our visualization technique uses a process that is described
in Figure 1. The problem with the size n; and instance with
capacity constraint, Q distance matrix D, and demands d
i
;
can be treated separately. For the problem, all solutions are
generated and their distances to each other calculated using a
dissimilarity measure. MDS produces the x and y coordinates
for the visualization. Then, feasibility and objective function
values are calculated for each solution of the instance. From
objective values we get the z coordinate and from tness
the colour that is used to differentiate feasible and infeasible
solutions.
A. Solution similarity
Let s
1
, s
2
R, be two solutions of a symmetric VRP.
The distance between solutions d(s
1
, s
2
) can be dened as the
number of edges not shared by the solutions. Thus, d is a dis-
similarity measure of VRP solutions. For operators like 2-opt
and relocate (Fig. 2), this Manhattan distance has been shown
to be a good metric to be used with routing problems (Fonlupt
et al., 1999). However, other binary dissimilarity measures
such as Dice, Jaccard, Yule, Russel-Rao, Rogers-Tanimoto and
Sokal-Sneath (Choi et al., 2010) can also be used, and we will
present the rst comparison of these measures in the domain
of routing problems.
B. Enumerating VRP solutions
We needed an effective way of enumerating all solutions
without capacity, time window, or similar constraints. Note that
the node degree (2), (3), subtour elimination (4), and variable
type (5) constraints from Section (II) are still respected. If we
let K : K 1 . . . n, all possible solutions are created.
We consider only the symmetric case where the graph is
undirected. Therefore, routing problems where the direction of
the tour is important (PDP, VRPTW etc.), are not considered
in this study.
Fig. 2: Relocate* operator and giant tour encoding
s
1
: s
2
:
d(s
1
, s
2
) = 4
0 1 2 0 3 4 5 0 0 1 2 3 0 4 5 0
We implemented three algorithms to enumerate the so-
lutions. 1) A permutation based algorithm lists all possible
choices for the rst points for K routes. All permutations
of remaining points are then divided to the routes in all
possible ways. 2) A matrix based algorithm that uses an integer
interpreted as binary upper strict triangle matrix of decision
variables. Increase by 1 gives a new solution. With constraints
to the sum of a row/column we can prune entire branches
of constraint breaking solutions. 3) An algorithm based on
generation of all Hamiltonian paths after which visits to the
depot are recursively added. A pseudocode of a subprocedure
for the last method is given below.
Require: giant tour encoded solution s
Require: a, b are indexes of s: a, b 0, . . . , [s[ 1
R
t

if b a 2 then
for c = a to b do
t
c
, t
c
+ the tours of s before and after c
t
b
+ the tour of s after b
C
1
s[c] ,= 0 and s[c + 1] ,= 0
C
2
t
c
.first() < t
c
.last()
C
3
t
c
+.first() < t
c
+.last()
C
4
t
c
.first() < t
c
+.first()
C
5
[t
b
+[ > 0 and t
c
+.first() < t
b
+.first()
if C
1
and C
2
and C
3
and C
4
and C
5
then
s
copy of s with visit to depot at c

R
t
R
t
s
R
t
R
t
call algorithm recursively with
s
, a
a, b
c + 1
R
t
R
t
call algorithm recursively with
s
, a
c + 1, b
b
end if
end for
end if
return R
t
We use giant tour encoding (Toth and Vigo, 2002) with 0
indicating the depot as illustrated in Figure 2. In addition we
10
use rules that require the tours to be directed so that the rst
node has always smaller index than the last node (conditions
C
2
, C
3
of the procedure) and that tours are ordered according
to their rst nodes (conditions C
4
, C
5
). These enforce unique
encoding of the solutions.
Require: N A Size of the CVRP instance
R
for all t Hamiltonian paths do
if t.first() < t.last() then
R R t
R R call algorithm with
s
t, a
1, b
N
end if
end for
return R
The algorithm described above is then used to generate
all solutions of an asymmetric VRP using the subprocedure
described earlier. Generation of Hamiltonian cycles can simply
be done generating permutations of the request indices.
C. Multidimensional Scaling
MDS is a name for a family of techniques of dimension-
ality reduction for data analytics and visualization. Input is
proximity data in the form of a dissimilarity matrix D
NN
of
high-dimensional coordinate points and the output embeddings
of these points into a lower dimensional space !
d
. Several
methods exist, but in this work we use the popular SMACOF
stress majorization algorithm (Borg and Groenen, 2005). As
the minimization target we used the Kurskal stress function:
(X, D) =
i<j
(d
ij

d
ij
)
2
(6)
We used the implementation from Orange Data Mining li-
brary
1
with Torgerson initialization (Borg and Groenen, 2005)
that gives an analytic solution to the MDS. The SMACOF was
terminated after 100 iterations or when termination condition
< 0.001 was met.
D. Drawing the Visualization
To draw the visualization we used Mayavi2
2
library for
scientic 3D data visualization. We used Delaunay 2D tri-
angulation to create a mesh which was then plotted with
Mayavi surface pipeline. LS algorithm trace is drawn using
3D parabolas as jumps from solution to another.
The accuracy of the visual representation can be veried
using tness landscape analysis measures. This idea is one
the major contributions of this paper. We want to examine if
important solution space features, such as the autocorrelation
length of a random walk (RW) (Weinberger, 1990), number
of local optima #LO discovered with random initialization
and LS, and distribution of the aforementioned local optima
(
d(LO
i
, LO
i
),
d
), are preserved. To do this we need to dene
a LS operator in the visualization space. In this work we chose
to use k-nearest neighbour search, where k is the length giant
tour encoding of the current solution.
1
http://orange.biolab.si/
2
http://code.enthought.com/projects/mayavi/
V. RESULTS
The described generation method is capable of producing
around 220 000 solutions per second on a 2.13GHz Intel Core
2 Duo workstation. For any practical purposes this is enough.
TABLE I: Number of solutions with different n
n 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
|R
CVRP
| 7 34 206 1486 12412 117692 1248004 14625856
|R
TSP
| 1 3 12 60 360 2520 20160 181440
Because all three implemented algorithms produced the
same number of solutions at least up to n = 10 we feel
condent that all VRP solutions are enumerated. Enumeration
with different number of customers yields a sequence shown in
Table I. To allow comparison, we have also listed the number
of possible solutions for a corresponding TSP expressed with
[R
TSP
[ = (n 1)!/2.
Our empirical study of the number of solutions to symmet-
ric CVRP leads to Formula (7) (Wilf, 2012). We have veried
it produces the correct number of solutions least up to N = 13.
By presenting the result, we would like to open discussion of
the implications of knowing the exact number of solutions.
|R
CVRP
| =
n
k=0
|s
1
(n, k)| b(k), where (7)
s
1
(n, m) =
nm
k=0
n 1 + k
n m + k
2n m
n m k
s
2
(n m + k, k)
(8)
s
2
(n, m) =
m
k=0
m
k
k
n
m!(1)
(km)
(9)
b(n) =
n
k=0
k
i=0
(1)
i
(k 2i)
n
k
i
2
k
k!
, b(0) = 1 (10)
In order to examine the suitability of the distance measures
we compare MDS stress. As a reference we use tting of a
uniformly random point cloud inside a unit 3D ball down to 2D
coordinates. Reference provides us an intuition of how tight
it gets when tting CVRP solutions into 2D. The results are
presented in Table II. Dice and Manhattan seem to be the ones
showing stable behaviour and least stress.
TABLE II: MDS stress comparison
CVRP 3D ball
|R| Dice Manhattan Jaccard Yule euclidean
7 0.008 0.004 0.010 0.027 0.003
34 0.019 0.021 0.032 0.037 0.008
206 0.035 0.039 0.042 0.056 0.010
1486 0.049 0.048 0.073 0.043 0.011
In Figure 3 we present visualizations of randomly gen-
erated TSP and CVRP instances produced with our method.
In addition, the rightmost plot visualizes a search trajectory
of Clarke-Wright construction heuristic followed by few it-
erations of 2-opt. Our visualization tool allows interactive
examination with freeform rotation around the visualizations
3
.
3
http://youtu.be/LW4DnTHpXoE
http://youtu.be/i6JsS6VjsEU
http://youtu.be/y53Qh2kC0Xo
11
(a) TSP, n = 6
(b) CVRP, n = 6
(c) CVRP LS, | N(s
i
)| = 1218
Fig. 3: Example visualizations produced using the described method
TABLE III: Perseverance of tness landscape features
Measure CVRP
n=4
CVRP
n=5
CVRP
n=6
0.22 0.70 0.67
#LO 0.73 0.24 0.01
d (
d
) 0.78 (0.53) 0.26 (0.32) 0.58 (0.59)
We calculated solution space metrics for 20 random CVRPs
and compared them with the ones for corresponding visual-
izations. Each RW and LS with maximum length of 500 steps
was repeated 100 times. Finally the results were averaged for
reliability. Table III shows correlations between these results. It
becomes clear that the accuracy of the described method drops
on transition from n = 5 to n = 6. Especially the placement
of local optima in a topology persevering way becomes hard.
Luckily, the problem is smaller with neighbourhood plots as
there is more room for the MDS to work. In addition, the vi-
sualization of neighbourhoods is more convenient in algorithm
development as it allows e.g. plotting of different LS strategies
into one visualization for comparison or troubleshooting.
VI. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE TOPICS
We have presented a technique capable of visualizing
vehicle routing problem solution landscapes. Because of this
technique, we were able to visually observe the nature of
the vehicle routing problem instance landscape for the rst
time. We also examined the accuracy of our method. We have
shown that the properties and possibilities make the presented
technique a viable tool for routing algorithm designers, es-
pecially when dealing with local search neighbourhoods. We
also presented the rst closed form function for the number of
solutions for symmetric CVRPs.
Further research might be extended the comparison to
recent routing specic distance measures (Lkketangen et al.,
2012). Also, accelerated methods such as Split-and-Combine
MDS or Landmark MDS might be needed to visualize larger
solution spaces and search algorithm neighbourhoods. Another
bottleneck was the handling of big distance matrices. Exper-
imentation with approximation and compression techniques
could lead to faster calculations and reduced memory footprint.
Our aim is to create an online gallery of problem variants
(CVRP, TSP, VRPTW, PDP etc.) and search trajectories of
different popular heuristic operators and metaheuristics. Also
the source code of the tool will be published with the gallery.
REFERENCES
S. Halim and H. C. Lau, Tuning tabu search strategies via
visual diagnosis, in Meta-Heuristics: Progress as Complex
Systems Optimization. Kluwer, 2007, pp. 365388.
P. Toth and D. Vigo, The vehicle routing problem. SIAM,
2002.
E. Weinberger, Correlated and uncorrelated tness landscapes
and how to tell the difference, Biological Cybernetics,
vol. 63, no. 5, pp. 325336, Sep. 1990.
C. Fonlupt, D. Robilliard, P. Preux, and E.-G. Talbi, Fitness
landscapes and performance of meta-heuristics, in Meta-
Heuristics: Advances and Trends in Local Search Paradigms
for Optimization. Kluwer, 1999, pp. 257268.
M. Kubiak, Distance measures and tness-distance analysis
for the capacitated vehicle routing problem, in Metaheuris-
tics: Pregress in Complex Systems Optimization. Springer,
2007, pp. 345364.
Z. J. Czech, Statistical measures of a tness landscape for
VRP, in Proceedings of IPDPS. IEEE, 2008, pp. 18.
E. Pitzer, M. Affenzeller, A. Beham, and S. Wagner, Com-
prehensive and automatic tness landscape analysis us-
ing heuristiclab, in EUROCAST11. Berlin, Heidelberg:
Springer-Verlag, 2012, pp. 424431.
F. Mascia and M. Brunato, Techniques and tools for search
landscape visualization and analysis, in Proceedings of
Stochastic Local Search 2009, Brussels, Belgium, ser.
LNCS, T. St utzle, M. Birattari, and H. Hoos, Eds., vol. 5752.
Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2010, pp. 92104.
M. Brunato and R. Battiti, Grapheur: a software architec-
ture for reactive and interactive optimization, in LION10.
Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2010, pp. 232246.
S. S. Choi, S. H. Cha, and C. Tappert, A Survey of Binary
Similarity and Distance Measures, Journal on Systemics,
Cybernetics and Informatics, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 4348, 2010.
I. Borg and P. Groenen, Modern Multidimensional Scaling:
Theory and Applications. Springer, 2005.
H. S. Wilf. (2012) A011800: number of labeled forests of
n nodes each component of which is a path. [Online].
Available: http://oeis.org/A011800
A. Lkketangen, J. Oppen, J. Oyola, and D. L. Woodruff,
An Attribute Based Similarity Function for VRP Decision
Support, Decision Making in Manufacturing and Services,
vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 6583, 2012.
12
Computational Intelligence the Key to Optimizing
Workforce Management and Professional Sports
League Schedules
Kimmo Nurmi
Satakunta University of Applied Sciences
Pori, Finland
cimmo.nurmi@samk.fi
Jari Kyngs
Pori, Finland
jari.kyngas@samk.fi
Nico Kyngs
Pori, Finland
nico.kyngas@samk.fi

Abstract Computational intelligence is a set of nature-
inspired computational methods to address highly complicated
real-world problems. Examples of such methods include neural
networks, fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms. This paper presents
our computational intelligence method called the PEAST
algorithm. The algorithm has been used to solve school
timetabling problems, many different workforce management
problems and several sports scheduling problems. In this paper
we summarize our work with real-world workforce scheduling
and professional sports league scheduling. The algorithm has
been integrated into market-leading workforce management
software in Finland and it is used to generate the schedule for the
Finnish Major Ice Hockey League.
Keywordscomputational intelligence; the PEAST algorithm;
workforce scheduling; sports scheduling; real-world scheduling
I. INTRODUCTION
Computational intelligence (CI) has a fairly broad
definition. We consider CI as a set of nature-inspired
computational methods to address highly complicated real-
world problems. These methods use ideas from their biological
counterparts and are related in particular to artificial learning.
Examples of such methods include neural networks [1], fuzzy
logic [2] and genetic algorithms [3].
Computational intelligence is particularly useful in solving
highly complex combinatorial optimization problems, such as
workforce scheduling [4] and sports scheduling [5]. These
scheduling problems have gained much attention among the
researchers in the last decade. One important reason for this is
that computers have evolved to such a state that they are able to
calculate complicated and time-consuming mathematics in a
reasonable amount of time.
Another reason is that the requirements and constraints of
real-world problems have become more complicated which
makes it impossible to produce solutions manually. Public
institutions and private companies have become more aware of
the possibilities for decision support technologies, and they no
longer want to create the schedules manually. One further
significant benefit of automating scheduling processes is the
considerable amount of time saved by the administrative staff
involved.
Section II describes our computational intelligence method,
the PEAST algorithm. The most important components of the
algorithm are discussed in more detail. These components are
the key to successful real-world use. In Section III we
summarize our work with the Finnish Major Ice Hockey
League. We also report our computational results in generating
the schedule for the 2013-2014 season. Section IV summarizes
our work with workforce scheduling. We report two
computational results in scheduling workforce in Finnish
companies. Section V presents conclusions and some of our
future work.
II. THE PEAST ALGORITHM
The most successful CI methods do not solely use neural
networks, fuzzy logic or genetic algorithms. They most likely
use mixed local search and population-based methods. A local
search method is defined by
1) A neighborhood structure, which is a mechanism to
obtain a new set of neighbor solutions by applying a
small perturbation to a given solution.
2) A method of moving from one solution to another.
3) Parameters of the method.
The main difficulty for a local search algorithm is
1) to explore promising areas in the search space to a
sufficient extent, while at the same time
2) to avoid staying stuck in these areas too long and
3) to escape from these local optima in some systematic
way.
13
Population-based methods use a population of solutions in
each iteration. The outcome of an iteration is also a population
of solutions. Population-based methods are a good way to
escape from local optima.
Osman and Laporte [6] define metaheuristic as follows: A
metaheuristic is an iterative generation process which guides a
subordinate heuristic by combining intelligent concepts for
exploring and exploiting the search space. Furthermore,
learning strategies are used to structure information in order to
efficiently find near-optimal solutions.
Blum and Roli [7] classify metaheuristics based on five
criteria:
1) Nature-inspired algorithms are those that are inspired
by some phenomenon in the nature.
2) Population based algorithms work with many
simultaneous solution candidates. This may lead to
high-quality solutions but the computing time
increases very quickly.
3) Dynamic objective function means that the algorithm
modifies the weights of the multiobjective function
during the search. This can be of great help when the
importance and difficulty of the objectives are not
known or cannot even be guessed.
4) One vs. various neighborhood structures. Using
various neighborhood structures usually makes the
search space larger. An algorithm can search one
neighborhood for some time and swap into another if
good solutions are not found.
5) Memory usage means that an algorithm saves the
search history while running. This helps the
evaluation of search locations if the search location
has been visited earlier the algorithm can use that
information.
Metaheuristic methods guide the search process towards
near-optimal solutions. The idea is to efficiently explore the
search space with a combination of simple local search
procedures and/or complex learning processes. The methods
are usually non-deterministic and they may include
mechanisms to avoid getting trapped in confined areas of the
search space (i.e. local minima).
Popular metaheuristic methods include ant colony
optimization [8], ejection chains [9], genetic algorithms, hill-
climbing, hyper-heuristics [10], idwalk [11], iterated local
search, memetic algorithms [12], particle swarm optimization
[13], simulated annealing [14], tabu search [15] and variable
neighborhood search [16].
The usefulness of an algorithm depends on several criteria.
The two most important ones are the quality of the generated
solutions and the algorithmic power of the algorithm (i.e. its
efficiency and effectiveness). Other important criteria include
flexibility, extensibility and learning capabilities. We can
steadily note that our PEAST algorithm realizes these criteria.
It has been used to solve several real-world scheduling
problems and it is in industrial use. The first version of the
algorithm was used to solve school timetabling problems [17].
The later versions of the algorithm have been used to solve
sports scheduling problems (see e.g. [18] and [19]) and
workforce scheduling problems (see e.g. [20] and [21]).
The PEAST algorithm is a population-based local search
method. It is very difficult to classify the algorithm as one of
the earlier mentioned metaheuristics. The basic hill-climbing
step is extended to generate a sequence of moves in one step,
leading from one solution to another as is done in the ejection
chain method. The algorithm avoids staying stuck (i.e. the
objective function value does not improve for some predefined
number of generations) in the same solutions using tabu search
and the refined simulated annealing method. The algorithm
belongs to population-based methods in that it uses a
population of solutions. This enables it to explore promising
areas in the search space to a sufficient extent. To escape from
local optima the algorithm shuffles the current solution
mimicing a hyper-heuristic mechanism. The acronym PEAST
stems from the methods used: Population, Ejection, Annealing,
Shuffling and Tabu. The pseudo-code of the algorithm is given
in Figure 1.
Fig. 1. The pseudo-code of the PEAST algorithm.
The GHCM heuristic is based on similar ideas to ejection
chains [19] and the Lin-Kernighan procedures [22]. The basic
hill-climbing step is extended to generate a sequence of moves
in one step, leading from one solution candidate to another.
The GHCM heurictis moves an object, o
1
, from its old position,
p
1
, to a new position, p
2
, and then moves another object, o
2
,
from position p
2
to a new position, p
3
, and so on, ending up
with a sequence of moves.
Picture the positions as cells as shown in Figure 2. The
initial object selection is random. The cell that receives the
object is selected by considering all the possible cells and
selecting the one that causes the least increase in the objective
function when only considering the relocation cost. Then,
another object from that cell is selected by considering all the
objects in that cell and picking the one for which the removal
causes the biggest decrease in the objective function when only
considering the removal cost. Next, a new cell for that object is
selected, and so on. The sequence of moves stops if the last

Set the iteration limit t, cloning interval c, shuffling interval s, ADAGEN
update interval a and the population size n
Generate a random initial population of schedules S
i
for 1 <= i <= n
Set best_sol = null, round = 1
WHILE round t
index = 1
WHILE index++ <= n
Apply GHCM heuristic to schedule S
index
to get a new schedule
IF Cost(S
index
) < Cost(best_sol) THEN Set best_sol = S
index

END WHILE
Update simulated annealing framework
IF round 0 (mod a) THEN Update the ADAGEN framework
IF round 0 (mod s) THEN Apply shuffling operators
IF round 0 (mod c) THEN Replace the worst schedule with the
best one
Set round = round + 1
END WHILE
Output best_sol

14
move causes an increase in the objective function value and if
the value is larger than that of the previous non-improving
move, or if the maximum number of moves is reached. Then, a
new sequence of moves is started. The maximum number of
moves in the sequence is ten.

Fig. 2. A sequence of moves in the GHCM heuristic.
We improve the GHCM heuristic by introducing a tabu list
which prevents reverse order moves in the same sequence of
moves. i.e. if we move an object o from position p
1
to position
p
2
, we do not allow o to be moved back to position p
1
before a
new sequence of moves begins.
Simulated annealing [14] is a celebrated local search
heuristic which avoids staying stuck in the promising search
areas too long. We use a simulated annealing refinement to
decide whether or not to commit to a sequence of moves in the
GHCM heuristic. This refinement is different from the standard
simulated annealing. It is used in a three-fold manner. Firstly,
when choosing an object to be moved from a cell, a random
object is chosen with probability exp(1/T
k
) instead of
choosing the least fit object. Here T
k
is the temperature at
step k. Secondly, when choosing the cell where to move the
object, a random cell is chosen with probability exp(1/T
k
)
instead of choosing the fittest cell. Lastly, when the sequence
of moves is cut short (i.e. a worsening move is made, and it
worsens the solution more than the previous worsening move
did), the whole sequence will still be committed with
probability exp(Af /T
k
) instead of rolling back to the best
position (i.e. the position at which the objective function value
is the lowest) of the sequence. Here Af is an increase in the cost
function.
We calculate the initial temperature T
0
by

( )
1
0 0
1/ log T X
=
where X
0
is the degree to which we want to accept an
increase in the cost function (we use a value of 0.75). The
exponential cooling scheme is used to decrement the
temperature:

1
,
k k
T T o
=
where is usually chosen between 0.8 and 0.995. We stop
the cooling at some predefined temperature. Therefore, after a
certain number of iterations, m, we continue to accept an
increase in the cost function with some constant probability, p.
Using the initial temperature given above and the exponential
cooling scheme, we can calculate the value

( ) ( )
1/
0
1/ log
m
T p o =

We choose m equal to the maximum number of iterations
and p equal to 0.0015.
For most PEAST applications we introduce a number of
shuffling operators simple heuristics used to perturb a
solution into a potentially worse solution in order to escape
from local optima that are called upon according to some
rule. We call the operator every k/20th iteration of the
algorithm, where k equals the maximum number of iterations
with no improvement to the cost function. The idea of shuffling
is the same as in hyperheuristics [10] but the other way around.
A hyperheuristic is a mechanism that chooses a heuristic from
a set of simple heuristics, applies it to the current solution to
get a better solution, then chooses another heuristic and applies
it, and continues this iterative cycle until the termination
criterion is satisfied. We introduce a number of simple
heuristics that are used to worsen the current solution instead of
improving it.
No crossover operators are applied to the population of
schedules. Every c iterations the least fit individual is replaced
with a clone of the fittest individual. This operation is
completely irrespective of the globally fittest schedule
(best_sol in Figure 1) found.
The PEAST algorithm uses ADAGEN, the adaptive genetic
penalty method introduced in [17]. A traditional penalty
method assigns positive weights (penalties) to the soft
constraints and sums the violation scores to the hard constraint
values to get a single value to be optimized. The ADAGEN
method assigns dynamic weights to the hard constraints based
on the constant weights assigned to the soft constraints. The
soft constraints are assigned fixed weights according to their
significance. This means that we are searching for a solution
that minimizes the (penalty) function

( ) ( ),
i i i i
i i
f x c g x o +
_ _

where
i
= a dynamically adjusted weight for hard constraint i
f
i
(x) = cost of violations of hard constraint i
c
i
= a fixed weight for soft constraint i
g
i
(x) = cost of violations of soft constraint i.

The hard constraint weights are updated every kth
generation using the method given in [12].
The PEAST algorithm uses random initial solutions. We
have found no evidence that a sophisticated initial solution
improves results. On the contrary, random initial solutions
seem to yield superior or at least as good results.
III. PROFESSIONAL SPORTS LEAGUE SCHEDULING
In the past decades professional sports leagues have
become big businesses; at the same time the quality of the
schedules have become increasingly important. This is not
surprising, since the schedule directly impacts the revenue of
all involved parties. For instance, the number of spectators in
15
the stadiums, and the traveling costs for the teams are
influenced by the schedule. TV networks that pay for
broadcasting rights want the most attractive games to be
scheduled at commercially interesting times in return.
Furthermore, a good schedule can make a tournament more
interesting for the media and the fans, and fairer for the teams.
An excellent overview of sports scheduling can be found in
[23] and an annotated bibliography in [24].
In a sports tournament, n teams play against each other over
a period of time according to a given timetable. The teams
belong to a league, which organizes games between the teams.
Each game consists of an ordered pair of teams, denoted (i, j),
where team i plays at home - that is, uses its own venue
(stadium) for a game - and team j plays away. Games are
scheduled in rounds, which are played on given days. A
schedule consists of games assigned to rounds. If a team plays
two home or two away games in two consecutive rounds, it is
said to have a break. In general, for reasons of fairness, breaks
are to be avoided. However, a team can prefer to have two or
more consecutive away games if its stadium is located far from
the opponents venues, and the venues of these opponents are
close to each other. A series of consecutive away games is
called an away tour.
In a round robin tournament each team plays against each
other team a fixed number of times. Most sports leagues play a
double round robin tournament (2RR), where the teams meet
twice (once at home, once away), but quadruple round robin
tournaments (4RR) are also quite common.
Sports scheduling involves three main problems. First, the
problem of finding a schedule with the minimum number of
breaks is the easiest one. De Werra [25] has presented an
efficient algorithm to compute a minimum break schedule for a
1RR. If n is even, it is always possible to construct a schedule
with n 2 breaks.
Second, the problem of finding a schedule that minimizes
the travel distances is called the Traveling Tournament
Problem (TTP) [26]. In TTP the teams do not return home after
each away game but instead travel from one away game to the
next. However, excessively long away trips as well as home
stands should be avoided.
Third, most professional sports leagues introduce many
additional requirements in addition to minimizing breaks and
travel distances. The problem of finding a schedule which
satisfies given constraints is called the Constrained Sports
Scheduling Problem (CSSP). The goal is to find a feasible
solution that is the most acceptable for the sports league owner
- that is, a solution that has no hard constraint violations and
that minimizes the weighted sum of the soft constraint
violations.
Scheduling the Finnish major ice hockey league is an
example of a CSSP. It is very important to minimize the
number of breaks. The fans do not like long periods without
home games, consecutive home games reduce gate receipts and
long sequences of home or away games might influence the
teams current position in the tournament. It is also very
important to minimize the travel distances. Some of the teams
do not return home after each away game but instead travel
from one away game to the next. There are also around a dozen
more other criteria that must be optimized. Next we describe
the problem in more detail.
Ice hockey is the biggest sport in Finland, both in terms of
revenue and the number of spectators. The spectator average
per game for the 2012-2013 season was 5213. In the Saturday
rounds one percent of the Finnish population (age 15-70)
attended the games in the ice hockey arenas.
The Finnish major ice hockey league has 14 teams. Seven
of the teams in the league are located in big cities (over
100,000 citizens) and the rest in smaller cities. One team is
quite a long way up north, two are located in the east and the
rest in the south.
The basis of the regular season is a quadruple round robin
tournament resulting in 52 games for each team. In addition,
the teams are divided into two groups of seven teams in order
to get a few more games to play. The teams in the groups are
selected based on fairness, i.e. the strengths of the teams are
most likely to be equal. These teams play a single round robin
tournament resulting in 6 games. The home teams of the games
are decided so that in two consecutive seasons each team has
exactly one home game against every other team in the group.
Finally, the so-called January leveling adds two extra games
for each team.
The quadruple round robin, six group games and two extra
games per team total to 60 games for each team and 420 games
overall. The standard game days are Tuesday, Friday and
Saturday. The schedule should maximize the number of games
on Fridays and on Saturdays in order to maximize the revenue.
For the same reason consecutive home games are not allowed
on Fridays and Saturdays. Furthermore, due to the travel
distances between some venues, certain combinations of a
Friday home team playing a Saturday away game against the
given team are not allowed.
Every team should play in the two rounds before and the
two rounds after New Years Eve and adhere to the traveling
rules. The schedule should include a weekend when seven pairs
of teams play against each other on consecutive rounds on
Friday and on Saturday. These match-up games are called
back-to-back games. Furthermore, local rivals should play as
many games as possible against each other in the first two
rounds and the number of Friday and Saturday games between
them should be maximized.
The traveling distances between some of the venues require
some teams to make away tours. That is, they should play away
either on Tuesday and on Thursday or on Thursday and on
Saturday.
Two teams cannot play at home on the same day because
they share a venue. Two other teams cannot play at home on
the same day because they share the same (businessmen)
spectators. Some of the teams cannot play at home in certain
days because their venues are in use for some other event.
Finally, in the last two rounds each team should play exactly
one home game. The detailed constraint model of the problem
can be found in [27].
16
We believe that scheduling the Finnish major ice hockey
league is one of the most difficult sports scheduling problems
because it combines break minimization and traveling distance
restrictions with dozens of constraints that must be satisfied.
We have used the PEAST algorithm and its predecessors to
schedule the league since the 2008-2009 season. Table I shows
the increase in the number of spectators in the last five seasons.
TABLE I. THE NUMBER OF SPECTATORS IN THE FINNISH MAJOR ICE
HOCKEY LEAGUE IN THE LAST EIGHT SEASONS
2005-2006 1 958 843
2006-2007 1 943 312
2007-2008 1 964 626
2008-2009 1 997 114
2009-2010 2 015 080
2010-2011 2 036 915
2011-2012 2 145 462
2012-2013 2 189 350
TABLE II. THE BEST SCHEDULE FOUND
C01 Hard
There are at most 90 rounds available for the
tournament
0
C04 Hard
A team cannot play at home in the given round
(43 cases)
0
C07 Hard
Two pairs of teams cannot play at home in the
same round (2 cases)
0
C08 Hard
A team cannot play at home on two consecutive
calendar days
0
C12 Hard
A break cannot occur in the second and last
rounds
0
C41 Hard Back-to-back games 0
C09 Soft 10 Number of away tours not scheduled 0
C13 Soft 10
Cases when a team has more than two
consecutive home games
0
C14 Soft 3
Cases when a team has more than two
consecutive away games
0
C15 Soft 5 The schedule should have at most 140 breaks 0
C19 Soft 5
Cases when there are less than five rounds
between two games with the same opponents
1
C22 Soft 1
Cases when two teams play against each other in
series of HHAA, AAHH, HAAAH or AHHHA
4
C23 Soft 1
Cases when a team does not play its home games
in given weekdays (teams wishes)
2
C26 Soft 1
Cases when the difference between the number of
played home and away games for each team is
more than two in any stage of the tournament
1
C27 Soft 3
Cases when the difference in the number of
played home games between the teams is more
than two in any stage of the tournament
0
C37 Soft 4
Cases when a teams travel distance in Friday and
Saturday games is too long
0
C37 Soft 4
The compact rounds around New Years Eve
should be considered
0
C38 Soft 10
The games between local rivals should be
considered
0
C39 Soft 10
Cases when the games between local rivals are
not in Fridays or in Saturdays
0
C40 Soft 10
The schedule should include at least 200 games
played either on Friday or on Saturday
0

The standard game days used to be Tuesday, Thursday and
Saturday. The league changed Thursdays to Fridays to get
more spectators. Friday games have had about 10% more
spectators. However, this has complicated the scheduling.
Minimizing the number of breaks is very important because
it is likely that having two consecutive home games on
Thursday and on Saturday decreases the number of spectators.
In the last ten seasons the number of spectators on Thursday
has decreased by 3.5% and on Saturday by 1.9%.
The process of scheduling the league takes about two
months. First, we discuss the possible improvements to the
format with the leagues competition manager. Then, the
format is accepted by the team CEOs. Next, all the restrictions,
requirements and requests by the teams are gathered. Finally,
the importance (penalty value) of the constraints is decided.
We run the PEAST algorithm for one week several times and
choose the best schedule. The league accepts the final schedule.
Table II shows the best solution found for the 2013-2014
season. The last column indicates the number of hard/soft
constraint violations. In [28] we presented a collection of
typical constraints that are representative of many scheduling
scenarios in sports scheduling. In Table II we refer to this
constraint classification. The solution has no hard constraint
violations and the penalty value for the soft constraint
violations is 12. The schedule has 89 rounds (C01), 139 breaks
(C15) and 220 games played either on Friday or on Saturday
(C40). This was by far the most difficult schedule to generate
compared to the earlier seasons.
IV. WORKFORCE SCHEDULING
Workforce scheduling is a difficult and time consuming
task that many companies must solve, especially when
employees are working on shifts or on irregular working days.
The workforce scheduling problem has a fairly broad
definition. A good overview of workforce scheduling is
published by Ernst et al. [29].
There are hundreds of workforce scheduling solutions
commercially available and in widespread use. However, most
of the commercial products do not include any computational
intelligence. Most of the workforce scheduling research
concentrates on nurse rostering. However, the recent interest of
the academic workforce scheduling community has somewhat
shifted to other lines of businesses. Some of these are retail
sector, transportation sector and contact centers.
Figure 3 shows the phases of the workforce scheduling
process. The process can be divided to preprocessing, main
scheduling and supplemental phases.
A. Preprocessing phases
The preprocessing phases of the workforce scheduling
process, workload prediction and preference scheduling, are
the foundation upon which the scheduling phases are built.
They may involve identifying both the needs of the employer
and customers and the attributes (preferences, skills etc.) of the
employees, and determining staffing requirements. This is the
point in the workforce scheduling process where historical data
and the schedules of previous planning horizons are most
useful.
17

Fig. 3. The workforce scheduling process.
Workload prediction, also referred to as demand forecasting
or demand modeling, is the process of determining the staffing
levels - that is, how many employees are needed for each
timeslot in the planning horizon. The staffing is preceded by
actual workload prediction or workload determination based on
static workload constraints given by the company, depending
on the situation. In preference scheduling, each employee gives
a list of preferences and attempts are made to fulfill them as
well as possible. The employees preferences are often
considered in the days-off scheduling and staff rostering
phases, but may also be considered during shift generation.
The nature of determining the amount and type of work to
be done at any given time during the next planning horizon
depends greatly on the nature of the job. If the workload is
uncertain then some form of workload prediction is called for
[29]. Some examples of this are the calls incoming to a call
center or the customer influx to a hospital. We have simulated
the randomly distributed workload based on historical data and
statistical analysis to find a suitable working structure (i.e. how
many and what kinds of employees are needed) over time.
Computationally this approach is much more intensive than
methods based on queuing theory. However, it has the benefit
of being applicable to almost any real-world situation. If the
workload is static, no forecasting is necessary. For example, a
bus transit company might be under a strict contract to drive
completely pre-assigned bus lines.
It is crucial for a workforce management system to allow
the employees to affect their own schedules. In general it
improves employee satisfaction. This in turn reduces sick
leaves and improves the efficiency of the employees, which
means more profit for the employer. Hence we use an easy-to-
use user interface that allows the employees to input their
preferences into the workforce management system. This eases
the organizational workload of the personnel manager. A
measure of fairness is incorporated via limiting the number and
type of different wishes that can be expressed per employee.
Preferences can be considered at the days-off scheduling and
staff rostering phases.
B. Main scheduling phases
The main scheduling phases, shift generation, days-off
scheduling and staff rostering, can be solved using
computational intelligence. Computational workforce
scheduling is key to increased productivity, quality of service,
customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. Other
advantages include reduced planning time, reduced payroll
expenses and ensured regulatory compliance.
Shift generation is the process of determining the shift
structure, along with the activities to be carried out in particular
shifts and the competences required for different shifts. Shift
generation transforms the determined workload into shifts. This
includes deciding break times when applicable. Shift
generation is essential especially in cases where the workload
is not static. In other cases companies often want to hold on to
their own established shift building methods.
A basic shift generation problem includes a variable
number of activities for each task in each timeslot. Some tasks
are not time-dependent; instead, there may be a daily quota to
be fulfilled. Activities may require competences. The most
important optimization target is to match the shifts to the
workload as accurately as possible. In our solutions we create
the shifts for each day separately, each shift corresponding to a
single employees competences and preferences. We do not
minimize the number of different shifts.
Days-off scheduling decides the rest days and the working
days of the employees. It is based on the result of the shift
generation: for each day a set of suitable employees must be
available to carry out the shifts. The coverage requirement
ensures that there are a sufficient number of employees on duty
at all times. The regulatory requirements ensure that the
employees work contract and government regulations are
respected. The personnels requests are very important and
should be met as well as possible; this leads to greater staff
satisfaction and commitment, and reduces staff turnover.
The final optimization phase of the workforce scheduling
process is staff rostering, during which the shifts are assigned
to the employees. The length of the planning horizon for this
phase is usually between two and six weeks. The preferences
of the employees are usually given a relatively large weight.
The most important constraints are usually resting times and
certain competences, since these are often laid down by the
collective labor agreements and government regulations.
C. Supplemental phases
To see if there will be any chance of succeeding at
matching the workforce with the shifts while adhering to the
given constraints, a resource analysis is run on the data. In
addition to helping the personnel manager see the problem with
the data, it may help in convincing the management level that
the current practices and processes of generating the schedules
are simply untenable. We have developed a statistical tool for
this.
Some real-world datasets are huge. They may consist of
hundreds of employees with a corresponding number of jobs.
In these cases it is probably computationally impossible to try
18
to roster the whole set of employees at once. We use the
PEAST algorithm to intelligently partition the data.
First the employees are partitioned according to their
average length of working day and possibly some other criteria
into a number of approximately equal-sized groups. Then the
jobs are partitioned into groups so that each group of jobs
corresponds to one group of employees, i.e. so that it should be
relatively easy to assign the jobs of one group to the
corresponding employee group. The assignments can be done
in parallel.
D. Two computational results
According to our experience, the best action plan for real-
world workforce scheduling research is to cooperate both with
a problem owner and with a third-party vendor. In addition, an
academic should consider not to work with user interfaces,
financial management links, customer reports, help desks, etc.
Instead, one should concentrate on modeling issues and
algorithmic power.
It is difficult to incorporate the experience and expertise of
the personnel managers into a workforce scheduling system.
Personnel managers often have extremely valuable knowledge,
experience and detailed understanding of their specific staffing
problem, which will vary from company to company. To
formalize this knowledge into constraints is not an easy task.
We have used the PEAST algorithm to solve real-world
shift generation problems in an international transportation and
logistics company, in a Finnish contact center and in the
biggest retail trade company. We next discuss the contact
center case. Note that only few shift generation cases have been
reported in the academic literature.
The contact center has 65 employees. The opening hours of
the contact center are from 6am to 10pm for every business
day. The length of a timeslot is 15 minutes. There are three
tasks in total, denoted by A, B and C. The total workload (in
timeslots) for task B is 594 and for task C 570. Only task A has
staff demand that is dependent on the time of day as shown in
Figure 4. The distribution of the employees competences for
the tasks and allowed/preferred shift lengths are given in Table
III.

Fig. 4. Staff demand for task A by day and time of day.
TABLE III. THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE EMPLOYEES COMPETENCES
AND ALLOWED/PREFERRED SHIFT LENGTHS
Competences Allowed 8h
Preferred 8h,
allowed 4-8h
No preference,
allowed 4-8h
Only for A 0 13 6
Only for B 8 6 3
Only for C 4 6 8
For A and B 0 7 0
For A and C 0 3 1

Table IV shows the best solution found for the problem.
For the hard and soft constraints of the problem we use the
classification we presented in [30]. The solution has no hard
constraint violations. The hard structure constraints (S1, S2)
ensure that the shifts are physically feasible. The hard volume
constraints (V5, V6) ensure that the employees can carry out
the shifts. The hard placement constraints ensure that each shift
has the correct number of suitable breaks (P3). Limiting the
minimum stretch length to two hours (P5) and the number of
task switches to less than one per shift (P6) are not inherently
hard constraints, but they were chosen to be such to model their
importance to the customer. The timeslot-based deviation from
the staff demand (C1) was chosen to incur quadratic costs in
order to both emphasize its importance and to balance the
individual timeslots deviations. The rest of the soft constraints
are close to linear by nature.
TABLE IV. THE BEST SHIFT GENERATION SOLUTION FOUND
S1 Hard
No shift should contain timeslots with multiple
types of activities
0
S2 Hard
No shift should contain gaps, i.e. timeslots with
no activities
0
V5 Hard
The lengths of the shifts must match the
employees available hours
0
V6 Hard
The competences necessary to carry out the shifts
must match the available workforce
0
P3 Hard
Each shift strictly shorter than 4 hours must
contain one 15-minute break. Each shift at least 4
and strictly less than 6 hours in length must
contain two 15-minute breaks. Each shift at least
6 hours in length must contain two 15-minute
breaks and one 30-minute break.
0
P5 Hard
No task should appear in stretches shorter than
two hours
0
P6 Hard
Each shift should contain at most one switch
from one task to another
0
C1 Soft 1
The number of employees at each timeslot over
the planning horizon must be exactly as given
32
C4 Soft 1
The total workload for each task must be carried
out
2
V1 Soft 1
The number of shifts, i.e. the number of
employees at work, must be minimized
286
V5 Soft 1
The lengths of the shifts must match the
employees preferred hours
2
P4 Soft 1
Within any shift, the breaks should be in the
order short-long(-short) and spaced so that the
distance between any adjacent breaks is equal
4
P7 Soft 1
Each switch between tasks should occur during a
break
5

We have used the PEAST algorithm to solve real-world
staff rostering problems in the biggest local bus company in the
capital city of Finland, in the biggest nationwide transportation
19
company in Finland and in one of the biggest hospitals in
Finland. We next discuss the hospital case.
The intensive-care unit of the hospital has 130 employees.
The employees must be assigned to shifts over the planning
horizon of six weeks. The hard and soft constraints for the
problem are given in Table V Note that the shifts and the days-
off are optimized at the same time. The problem includes five
characteristics that are not always present in the nurse rostering
cases reported in the academic literature:
1) The number of nurses is over 100
2) The nurses are grouped in four categories based on
their total working hours within the planning horizon
(100%, 78.43%, 50% and 40% of the full-time work)
3) Some shifts last more than 14 hours and actually
include two consecutive shifts
4) Some nurses should always work on the same shifts
5) The nurses wishes for days-off and shifts cover as
much as 50% of their total work.
TABLE V. THE BEST STAFF ROSTERING SOLUTION FOUND
C1 Hard
An employee cannot be assigned to overlapping
shifts
0
C2 Hard
A minimum number of employees with particular
competences must be guaranteed for each shift
0
R5 Hard
The minimum time gap of rest time (11 hours)
between two shifts must be respected
0
R7 Hard
Employees cannot work consecutively for more
than 6 days
0
O1 Hard
An employee can only be assigned to a shift
he/she has competence for
0
O5 Hard
An employee assigned to a shift type t1 must not
be assigned to a shift type t2 on the following
day
0
C4 Soft 2
A balanced number of surplus employees must
be guaranteed in each working day
4
R1 Soft 10
The required number of working hours must be
respected
3
R3 Soft 4
The required number of free weekends (both
Saturday and Sunday free) within a planning
horizon must be respected
16
E1 Soft 4 Single days-off should be avoided 124
E2 Soft 2 Single working days should be avoided 53
E3 Soft 2
The maximum length of consecutive days-off is
three
0
E4 Soft 1
The number of single days-off and single
working days between employees should not
differ by more than 25%
5
E5 Soft 1
The number of different shift types between
employees should not differ by more than 50%
46
E7 Soft 1
The number of different working weekdays
between employees should not differ by more
than 50%
127
E8 Soft 4
Assign or avoid a given shift type before or after
a free period
0
P1 Soft 5
Assign or avoid assigning given employees to the
same shifts
0
P2 Soft 6
Assign a requested day-on or avoid a requested
day-off
**
P3 Soft 6
Assign a requested shift or avoid an unwanted
shift
**
** more than 95% fulfilled
The best solution generated by the PEAST algorithm is
shown in Table V. For the hard and soft constraints of the
problem we use the classification we presented in [31]. The
solution has no hard constraint violations. The PEAST
algorithm was able to find a solution where all but one
employee had exactly the required number of working hours.
The algorithm also found a solution where more than 95% of
all the employees wishes were fulfilled even though those
wishes covered as much as 50% of the employees total work
on average.
V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
We introduced our computational intelligence method
called the PEAST algorithm and presented its most important
components. We summarized our work with real-world
workforce scheduling and professional sports league
scheduling. We reported our main results in generating
schedules for the Finnish Major Ice Hockey League and in
scheduling workforce for Finnish companies. The PEAST
algorithm has been integrated into market-leading workforce
management software in Finland and it has been used to
generate the schedule for the Finnish Major Ice Hockey League
since 2008-2009 season.
Our future work concentrates on solving problems which
include both location and vehicle routing in addition to
workforce scheduling. Furthermore, we seek to extend our
workforce scheduling research to new lines of businesses.
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(MISTA), Phoenix, USA, 2011.

21
Utilizing Bzier surface pattern recognition for
analyzing military tactics

Jari Sormunen, Lt.Col.
National Defence University,
Finnish Defence Forces, Santahamina
Finland
Harri Eskelinen, D.Sc
Lappeenranta University of Technology
PL 20, 53850 Lappeenranta
Finland
harri.eskelinen@lut.fi

Abstract This paper describes how to develop and utilize a
method based on Bzier surface pattern recognition, which could
be used for the overall military tactical analysis of a companys
attack. This paper also explains how this method could be
applied to an integrated analysis of the most important tactical
factors affecting the success and task fulfillment of an attack
together with the effects of the leaders decision-making and his
or her tactical solutions. The presented approach aims towards
overall optimizing process to ensure the performance
maintenance of a military unit. The applied idea of Bzier surface
pattern recognition gives options to widen the approach towards
advanced computational analysis.
Keywords Military tactics; decision-making; company; attack
exercise; Bzier surface
I. INTRODUCTION
The tactical basic research, The Success Factors of
Infantry Companys Attack (SCA research), which was
carried out in the Finnish Defence Forces (FDF) during the
years 2004-2007 forms the empirical background of this paper.
The SCA research focused on analyzing different individual
effects of selected explanatory measured variables. The
variables were selected from the areas of tactics, situational
awareness, battle task load, human factors, background factors
and response variables. During this research, 59 attacks by
infantry companies were analyzed. This paper presents a
comprehensive evaluation method for tactical analysis. The
development of the method started from constructing the data
collection matrix. Later on in this paper, the method is called
the CMEP method (Command and control, Manoeuvre, Effect,
Performance Maintenance) and its data collection matrix is
entitled the CMEP matrix. This matrix is presented in Fig. 1.
The construction and order of the rows and the columns of the
CMEP matrix are based on the observations collected in the
SCA research and supported by literature research [1], [3].
II. QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS

In the Finnish Defence Forces Field Manual 2008 [2] the
central tactical principles are described with the words,
consciously, actively, simply, concentratedly and
continuously. The sequence of the tactical principles, which is
the sequence of the rows in the CMEP matrix, is determined
based on the causalities found from the literature and the
qualitative analysis of the source data collected from the SCA
research. According [2], tactical principles should always be
integrated with the time dependent result. Based on these facts,
the sequence of the rows in the CMEP matrix, should be
knowledge of adversary and own, activeness, simplicity,
concentration of effect, reserve and exertion of it.

Fig. 1. The CMEP matrix.
According [2], the tactical elements are command and
control, manoeuvre, effect and performance maintenance. The
tactical principles become apparent in the interaction with the
tactical elements of the battle. According to [2], the purpose of
the manoeuvre near the adversary is to move ones own troops
safely to the position from which it is possible to affect the
adversary effectively with fire. Further, command and control
can be seen as a factor which aims to integrate the other tactical
elements of the battle field. When considering the
chronological order of the tactical elements, the sequence is
command and control, manoeuvre, effect and performance
maintenance. The tactical elements (columns of the CMEP
matrix) of the CMEP matrix are the same as the tactical
elements in the battlefield according to [2].
The tactical elements presented in the columns of the
CMEP matrix can be evaluated by utilizing the adverbs
22
presented in the rows of the CMEP matrix (consciously,
actively, simply, concentratedly and continuously). For
example, command and control could simultaneously be
conscious, active, simple, concentrated and/or continuous).
This viewpoint has lead to the 5*4 - CMEP matrix and enables
the qualitative tactical evaluation of an attack. From the tactical
viewpoint, the central aspect which connects the rows and
columns of the CMEP matrix is time. As illustrated in Fig. 2,
the time dependent structure of the CMEP matrix makes it
possible to study in the desired time window both what actions
have been taken and in what way these actions were carried
out. Within the CMEP matrix, a part of a tactical phenomenon
could be expressed as conscious command and control in the
time window tw
1
or it could be entitled active manoeuvre
in the time window tw
2
if it is relevant to limit the size of the
time window to illustrate just a small part of the tactical
phenomenon. From the viewpoint of the battle result, the study
of tactical phenomena could be extended in the time window
tw
3
, which covers several checkers of the CMEP matrix
(several tactical actions have taken place and are carried out in
different ways). Because both the tactical elements and tactical
principles are time dependent and there is causality which
establishes the sequence of them, there is also a time axis
passing along the diagonal of the CMEP matrix. The CMEP
matrix construction makes it possible to describe the tactical
grounds so that e.g. good command and control could be
simultaneously based on situational awareness (consciousness)
and activeness, or on the other hand, effect could be
simultaneously concentrated and simple. In addition to the
description of these types of separate tactical reason-
consequence-relations, the CMEP matrix construction makes it
possible to study comprehensively different integrated tactical
phenomena within the 5*4 field (see Fig. 2). In this research
the checkers, which are formed at the crossings of the rows and
columns of the CMEP matrix, are called CTVs (Central
Tactical Variable) and the aspects they can be divided into are
called tactical items. The contents of the tactical variables and
items are established by the qualitative analysis of the source
data collected from the SCA research. The qualitative analysis
is carried out by applying the principles presented in [4].
III. QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS
The next logical step after the qualitative analysis, which
resulted in the construction of the CMEP matrix, is the
quantifying process of the collected data to be entered into the
CMEP matrix as numerical values of each CTV. When
quantifying the qualitative results, the numerical values of each
CTV value were calculated by classifying the number of
positive/ neutral/ negative perceptions. The source data comes
from the SCA research [8]. The presentation can be developed
in a more illustrative manner by constructing a surface model
from these numerical values. This is performed by changing
the numerical values of the matrix into the height values of the
surface model. As an essential part of this quantitative analysis,
formulated Bzier surfaces were used as resulting surfaces,
which indicate the goodness of the tactical solutions and
performance of an attack. In addition to the formulation of the
surface, a specialized surface ratio curve is calculated to be
able to evaluate the attacks by using quantified grading.

Fig. 2. Utilization of the matrix construction for forming the tactical time
windows (tw13 = time window 13).
Based on the qualitative viewpoint, we already know how
the columns of the CMEP matrix describe what is done
(lead, move, affect, maintain) and how the rows of the CMEP
matrix describe in what ways these actions are carried out
(consciously, actively, simply, concentratedly, continuously)
when a company carries out an attack. When we integrate the
third dimension with the matrix (z-axis), it is possible to
evaluate from the viewpoint of tactics the success of each
action and the success of an attack. This principle is illustrated
in Fig. 3. If we regard the numerical value of each central
tactical variable as its assessment related to the success of the
corresponding action described with this variable, the surface
model constructed based on the numerical values of each CTV
can be regarded as an overall assessment of the analyzed
attack. The height values evaluate how well knowledge of
the adversary and ones own force, activity, simplicity,
concentration of effect and reserve and exertion of it have been
carried out in relation with command and control, manoeuvre,
effect and performance maintenance. The height values of the
surface model change depending on time, which makes it
possible to study the tactical phenomena at different moments
during the progress of an attack or after the end of an attack.
The quantitative evaluations of task fulfillment and casualty
data were integrated into the presentation by positioning the
surface at the z-axis according to the given numerical values of
task fulfillment and casualty data. In the same way it would be
possible e.g. to change the positioning of the surface depending
on the difficulty level of the task. This quantifying process is
presented in outline in Fig. 4.

Fig. 3. Integrating the z-axis with the CMEP matrix of the matrix. (tw13 =
time window 13).
23
As shown in Fig. 4, the basic height values of the surface
are calculated by summing the scaled numerical values
describing the task fulfilment and casualties. These values can
be regarded as basic assessment criteria of success in the battle
and therefore their scaled values are added to each central
tactical variable to move the surface to the higher or lower
level, which indicates how well the task is fulfilled and what
the casualty ratio was after the battle. The additional quantified
and scaled values of each central tactical variable are summed
with these basic values.

Fig. 4. Quantifying process
An example of the Bzier surface, which is calculated
based on the measured data in the SCA research [8], for
successful attacks is presented in Fig. 5.
IV. CALCULATING THE SURFACE AREA RATIO CURVE
From the produced surface model of the CMEP method, it
is possible to cut different slices along xy-, yz- or zx-planes to
evaluate different tactical aspects or to conduct a time
dependent analysis of them. The calculated grading curve
(surface area ratio curve) of the CMEP method makes it
possible to carry out an exhaustive and overall evaluation of
the attack exercise. To be able to evaluate the tactics of the
battles by using quantified grading, the surface area ratio curve
is calculated. An example is presented in Fig. 6. From this
curve, it is reasonable to read how large a relative portion of
the CTVs have reached the required grading level. On the other
hand, it is possible to set a grading value which divides the
battles into successful or unsuccessful ones. This curve also
shows how wide the basis for success has been or if only a few
CTVs affecting success have reached the required level. This
grading curve is an application of the Abbott-Firestone curve,
which is applied to surface analysis [5].

Fig. 5. Calculated Bzier surface and the grading curve.
V. BZIER SURFACE MODELING
Bzier surface presentations are utilized to support both
decision-making and to integrate the results of several design
or reasoning stages, e.g. in optimum shape design, according to
[9]. Also in [6] the possibilities to utilize Bzier curves in
different types of practical applications have been evaluated to
improve the local information gained from the surface model.
In [6] improved and enhanced Bzier curve models are
presented. Extensive research has also been conducted to find
means to describe the shape information of Bzier surfaces [7]
for interpreting different modeled phenomena.

Fig. 6. The surface area ratio curve.
These aspects are of great interest when there is a need to
integrate qualitative and quantitative measurement results to
support tactical analysis. When evaluating the reliability
aspects of the surface modeling, two main points were
checked: How the selected Bzier surface calculation differed
from other possible modeling techniques in relation to pattern
recognition and what the difference is in grading. The
viewpoint of interest focuses to the higher levels of the surface,
which start above the layers describing ones own and the
adversarys casualties together with task fulfillment. Four
different surface modeling techniques were compared: Bzier,
Mozaic, Pyramid and Block surfaces. Basically, the Mozaic
model describes exactly the measured values of each item in all
twenty CTVs. Compared to this, the Block model summarizes
the values of different items within each of the twenty CTVs
and it shows correctly the summarized values of each CTV.
The Pyramid model is otherwise the same, but only the peaks
are illustrated with the sharp vertex of twenty cones. The idea
of the CMEP method is to combine time aspect into both
CMEP matrix axes, which means that the heights of the
neighboring bars should change smoothly according to the
tactical phenomena. Unlike the other modeling techniques, the
Bzier surface is able to illustrate this feature due to its
mathematical properties. The comparison results of different
grading curves and the surfaces of each modeling techniques
are presented in Fig. 7.

Fig. 7. Comparison of different surface modeling techniques.
VI. INTERPRETATION OF BZIER SURFACE PATTERNS
As a part of computing advances in military OR
(Operations Research), especially in tactical decision-making,
the surface interpretation is based on recognizing some
24
geometrical shapes from the surface pattern. This recognizing
process is supported by a picture series describing the most
relevant surface shapes which are assumed to present some
tactical phenomena and their success. The comparison of the
calculated Bzier surface is performed with theoretical
surfaces. Based on these theoretical surfaces, a set of definition
maps were produced to support the interpretation process of
military tactics. The comparison is divided into the following
three parts: Geometric similarity of the definition maps and the
calculated surface pattern, tactical dependency between
researched viewpoints and the synthesis of the surface patterns.
From the top view of the calculated surface, it can be proved
that surface patterns at different height levels of the surface
indicate and highlight by different weightings the aspects
which have an effect on the result of the battle. It is as
important to recognize these surface patterns at different height
levels as it is to recognize the surface pattern at the highest
(=most visible) surface level. This shows that several aspects
simultaneously have an effect on the result of the battle. It also
shows that depending on the battle situation, the impact factor
of these aspects varies. As documented in Table 1, in this case
example, only one chain is named and analyzed. Surface
pattern recognition and interpretation. In this case, according to
tactical interpretation, in order to enable initiative in battle, the
leaders have ensured the freedom of action by maintaining the
possibility to affect in creative ways and by avoiding force
binding. In addition to this, the leaders have been open to
looking for new possibilities and to taking initiative. Initiative
in manoeuvres, effects and other actions has shown in
proactive actions to varying situations and the unexpected
actions of the adversary. The leaders have had a strong
understanding of utilizing the units and its subunits execution
capability and they have understood the necessary functions to
carry out the planned, prepared and trained actions before the
adversary has had time to force them to do so. Both the leaders
and the subunits have had the courage and the justification to
find and use the effects of supporting branches in a simple and
creative way to fulfill the battle task.
TABLE I. SURFACE PATTERN RECOGNITION AND INTERPRETATION

Constructed
surface and its top
view and
recognized pattern
shape

Calculated Bzier

Top view Schematic

Recognized
shape from the
top view of the
surface
Recognized
(visible)
sequential CTVs
Nearest schematic
geometry in the set of
definition map
Chain 5 6 10
11 15 19
1 5 6 10
11 15
VII. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The aim of the CMEP method is to integrate several
different variables and affecting factors into one overall tactical
analysis according to the leaders decisions, solutions, and
orders and according to the units actions and according to the
events in the battle space. Using a Bezier surface for a data set
is simple from mathematical point of view, and it can be easily
done by using commercial software. On the other hand,
visualization of data and objective functions is an essential part
of decision-making. Therefore different interpolation methods
help a decision-maker to understand the problem. By
integrating a qualitative and quantitative analysis of an attack
within the Bzier surface model, it is possible to extract and
identify certain key points of the battle such as task fulfillment,
required resources to achieve victory in a battle, tactical timing
aspects, justification of tactical decisions and culmination
points of the battle. Because the surfaces are produced from
measured data into the form of Bzier surfaces, it is possible to
add mathematical comparison and pattern recognition in the
CMEP method. The primary challenge was in finding an
appropriate way to handle several qualitative parameters
describing tactical aspects. The sensitivity analysis of the
CMEP method shows that it is possible to affect the resolution
of the surface model by tuning the scaling of different layers of
the surface model. However, a sufficient amount of source data
is more critical to ensure that the height differences of the
surface model are clear enough to illustrate different tactical
aspects. This research will be continued within the cooperation
between FDF and LUT. The next stage will be the further
development of the interpretation maps of the Bzier surfaces..
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Authors express their gratitude to Mr. Sami Karsikas for
illustrative figures in this paper and to LUT Language Centre
for proofreading.
REFERENCES
[1] C.Bellamy, The Evolution of Modern Land Warfare, Theory and
Practice, Routledge, 13, pp. 15-21, 25, 1990.
[2] Field Manual, The Finnish Defence Forces, Infantry Companys Battle
Guideline, Edita Prima Oy, pp. 18-20, 92-93 and 123-124, 2008.
[3] B.H Liddell Hart, Strategy - the indirect approach, New York, pp. 336-
341, 1954.
[4] M.Miles and MHuberman, Qualitative Data Analysis, 2nd Edition,
Thousand Oaks, pp.10-12, 1994.
[5] J. Schmahling and F. Hamprecht, Generalizing the Abbott-Firestone
curve by two new surface descriptors, Wear, Vol. 262, Issue 11-12,
pp.1360-1371, 2007.
[6] F.Sohel, G.Karmakar, L. Dooley and J.Arkinstall, Enhanced Bezier
curve models incorporating local information, IEEE International
Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Vol. IV,
article 1415993, pp. IV253-IV256, 2005.
[7] F.Sohel, G.Karmakar and L.Dooley, Bezier curve-based character
descriptor considering shape information, 6th IEEE/ACIS International
Conference on Computer and Information Science, pp. 212-216, 2007.
[8] J.Sormunen and H.Eskelinen, Measured Tactics - Success Factors of
Infantry Companys Attack, Edita Prima Oy, pp. 43-61, 2010.
[9] Vucina, D., Lozina, Z., and Pehnec, I. Computational procedure for
optimum shape design based on chained Bzier surfaces
parameterization, Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence,
Vol 25, Issue 3, No. 4, 2012.
25
Sensitivity Analysis in Sequencing Models
Yury Nikulin
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
20014 University of Turku
Email: yurnik@utu.
AbstractA problem of minimization a liner form on a set
of substitutions is considered. The main problem parameters are
subject to small independent perturbations. Sensitivity analysis
of an optimal solution is the main research focus. Appropriate
measures of optimal solutions quality with respect to the un-
certain environment are introduced. These measures correspond
to the so-called stability and accuracy functions dened earlier
in literature for some combinatorial optimization problems.
Analytical expressions of such functions are presented. The
maximum norms of perturbations for which an optimal solution
preserves own optimality are also specied. The results are
interpreted in terms of some well-known job sequencing models.
The link between sensitivity analysis and robust optimization is
established. Computational issues are discussed.
I. INTRODUCTION
The increased interest (see [3]) in sensitivity and post-
optimal analysis of various optimization and scheduling mod-
els is motivated by the fact that the input parameters, as a
link between the real world and the model, are far from being
unambiguously dened. Solutions of discrete optimization
problems can exhibit remarkable sensitivity to perturbations in
the space of parameters of the problem, thus often rendering
a computed solution highly infeasible, suboptimal, or both.
It is evident that an arbitrary real-life problem may not be
correctly specied and solved without using the results of
stability theory and related issues at least implicitly.
The terms stability and accuracy analysis, sensitivity anal-
ysis or post-optimal analysis are used for the stage at which a
solution of an optimization problem has already been specied
(the problem with initial data has been resolved to optimality),
and additional calculations are performed in order to investi-
gate how this solution depends on the numerical input data.
In this context, sensitivity analysis may serve as an additional
decision making tool helping to select one solution which has
better stability (robustness) properties.
The most frequently considered object as a tool of sensitiv-
ity analysis is the so-called stability radius with respect to some
given optimal solution. It gives a subset of problem parameters
for which this solution remains optimal. There are already
similar investigations in multiobjective case (see e.g. [2]). For
example, one can nd also a large survey on sensitivity analysis
of vector unconstrained integer linear programming in [1].
It is important to note that the stability radius may not
provide us with any information about the quality of a given
solution in the case when problem data are outside of the
stability region. Some attempts to study a quality of the
problem solution in this case are connected with concepts
of stability and accuracy functions. These functions were
rstly introduced in [4] for scalar combinatorial optimization
problem. Later, in [5] the results of [4] were extended to the
vector linear discrete optimization problem with Pareto and
lexicographic optimality principles.
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
First, we consider a single objective variant of the well-
known problem of minimization a linear form on a set of
substitutions. Let m 2 be a problem dimension. Let
A = (a
1
, a
2
, . . . , a
m
) R
m
+
and B = (b
1
, b
2
, . . . , b
m
) R
m
+
be two positive real-valued row vectors where R
+
= u
R : u > 0. These vectors represent the problem param-
eters. Let S
m
be a symmetric group of substitutions on a
set N
m
= 1, 2, . . . , m. The objective function is a linear
function dened on a non-empty subset T S
m
:
f(t, A, B) =
m
j=1
a
j
b
t(j)
,
where t = (t(1), t(2), . . . , t(m)). We assume that the set T is
known, xed and can be specied by complete enumeration of
the alternatives (substitutions). In practise, of course, the set of
feasible substitutions can be specied by a set of constraints
or some elimination (propagation) rules, however since in our
model the feasibility is not going to be anyhow affected we
assume full enumeration possibility as the simplest one. The
problem, which we denote Z(T, A, B), consists in nding t
=
arg min
tT
f(t, A, B). We denote T(A, B) the set of all optimal
substitutions in problem Z(T, A, B).
Many problems of scheduling theory such as e.g. job
sequencing and routing problems as well as many classical
combinatorial optimization problems can be represented as
Z(T, A, B) by making a relevant choice of basic problem
parameters A, B and T. For example, consider a single
machine scheduling problem where all jobs 1, 2, . . . , m are
sequenced to be processed on one machine (a unit disjunctive
resource). Let A encode job processing times, and set T
specify feasible (due to the possible presence of precedence
constraints) orderings of the jobs. So, any particular t =
(t(1), t(2), . . . , t(m)) T species for each job j N
m
the place t(j) at which it has to be processed. Then given
B = (m, m1, . . . , 1), for any particular t T, the value of
f(t, A, B) will be equal to the total sum of completion times
m
j=1
C
j
. Indeed, since under t the job position in the sequence is
given by t(j) its processing time a
j
will be counted (summed
up) m j + 1 time (due to additivity of total ow) which
results in
f(t, A, B) =
m
j=1
(mj + 1)a
t
1
(j)
=
m
j=1
C
j
,
26
where t
1
is inverse to t, so a
t
1
(j)
is a processing time of
the job placed at j-th position in the ordering.
For any xed pair of substitutions t, t
T we dene
q(t, t
, A, B) = f(t, A, B)f(t
, A, B) =
m
j=1
a
j
(b
t(j)
b
t
(j)
).
If t
is optimal substitution in problem Z(T, A, B), then

q(t
, t
, A, B) 0 for every t
T, and equality to zero

happens in the presence of more than one optima. Denote
T(A, B) the set of all optima in Z(T, A, B).
For a given substitution t T, denote
W(t, A, B) = t
T :
m
j=1
[ b
t(j)
b
t
(j)
[> 0,
i.e. W(t, A, B) represents the set of all substitutions t
T
which are different from t with respect to B in that sense that
there exists at least one j N
m
with b
t(j)
,= b
t
(j)
. If all
b
j
, j N
m
are different (as e.g. in the above mentioned case
where B = (m, m 1, . . . , 1)), then W(t, A, B) = Tt.
Any optimum t
T(A, B) with W(t
, A, B) = we call
trivial, otherwise nontrivial. The set of all nontrivial optima t
denote as

T(A, B). There are two cases possible only: either
T(A, B) = T(A, B) (all optima are nontrivial) or

T(A, B) =
(all optima are trivial).
When vector of coefcients of objective function changes,
then initially optimal solution may become no longer optimal
in the modied problem. We will evaluate the quality of this
solution from the point of view of its robustness on data
perturbations. Namely, we introduce for t
T(A, B) and a
given vector A R
m
+
so-called absolute error of this solution:
(t
, A, B) := f(t
, A, B) min
tT
f(t, A, B) =
max
tT
q(t
, t, A, B).
Observe that for arbitrary A and B, we have (t
, A, B)
0. If (t
, A, B) > 0, then t
, T(A, B), and this positive

value of the absolute error may be treated as a measure of
inefciency of t
in Z(T, A, B). It is also clear that for t

T(A, B)
(t
, A, B) = max
_
0, max
tW(t
,A,B)
q(t
, t, A, B)
_
=
max
t

W(t
,A,B)
q(t
, t, A, B),
where

W(t
, A, B) := W(t
, A, B) t
. Just another
implication of this fact is that while calculating the value
of the absolute error it is sufcient to look at t with
m
j=1
[
b
t
(j)
b
t(j)
[> 0 exclusively, since only they may contribute
to positiveness of the error. Another simple observation is that
if t
is trivial, then so do the other optima (if any), and hence

(t
, A, B) = 0 for all t
T(A, B). Moreover this will be

kept true for any modied A R
m
+
, so it is sufcient since
now to perform sensitivity analysis for nontrivial optima only.
Thus, after reasoning above, we may conclude that it could be
a particular interest to measure the absolute error of nontrivial
optimum t

T(A, B) as specied above.
The following example will nalize this section.
Example 1: We illustrate the absolute error calculation
using the problemof job sequencing on a single machine which
has been already mentioned earlier in the text. Given m = 3
jobs which constitute the set N
3
= 1, 2, 3, and let their
processing times be encoded by vector A = (1, 2, 5). As we
know, in order to model the case of total completion time
minimization we should set B = (3, 2, 1). If no precedence
constraints are specied, then the set of feasible solutions
for our problem contains all the permutations of 1, 2, 3,
so T = t
1
, t
2
, . . . , t
6
, where t
1
= (1, 2, 3), t
2
= (1, 3, 2),
t
3
= (2, 1, 3), t
4
= (2, 3, 1), t
5
= (3, 1, 2), and t
6
= (3, 2, 1).
Then, we calculate the objective values as follows
f(t
1
, A, B) = 12, f(t
2
, A, B) = 15, f(t
3
, A, B) = 13,
f(t
4
, A, B) = 19, f(t
5
, A, B) = 17, f(t
6
, A, B) = 20. Hence,
the optimal substitution is t
1
which prescribes the jobs to
be processed in optimal order according to the well-known
shortest processing time rst rule (see e.g. [8]). Then since
t
1

T(A, b), we have (t
, A, B) = 0.
Now consider the same problem with vector

A = (1 +
, 2, 5), where > 0. Then f(t
1
, A, B) = 12 + 3,
f(t
2
, A, B) = 15 + 3, f(t
3
, A, B) = 13 + 2, f(t
4
, A, B) =
19+2, f(t
5
, A, B) = 17+, f(t
6
, A, B) = 20+. So, now it
becomes clear that until 1, optimality of t
1
is preserved,
i.e. t
1
T(

A, B). If processing time of job 1 experience
larger perturbations ( > 1), it will lose optimality and then
the positive value of the absolute error (t
,

A, B) > 0
shows the speed of deviation from optimum, which is actually
t
3
T(

A, B).
III. STABILITY AND ACCURACY FUNCTIONS
Henceforward, we assume that in any particular instance of
Z(T, A, B) the set T is xed, vector B is also xed, but vector
A may vary or is estimated with errors. Moreover, it is assumed
that the problem Z(T, A, B) resolved to optimality, i.e. the
sets T(A, B) and

T(A, B) are detected. In the following we
are interested, in fact, in nding for any specied optimum
t

T(A, B) the maximum value of the error (t
, A
, B)
where A
belongs to some pre-specied set. Two particular

cases are considered.
In the rst case we are interested in absolute perturbations
of the weights of elements and the quality of a given solution is
described by the so-called stability function. For a given 0
the value of the stability function is equal to the maximum
absolute error of a given solution under the assumption that
no weights of elements are increased or decreased by more
than .
In the second case we deal with relative perturbations of
weights. This leads to the concept of the accuracy function.
The value of the accuracy function for a given [0, 1) is
equal to the maximum absolute error of the solution t
under
the assumption that the weights of the elements are perturbed
by no more than 100% of their original values.
For a given [0, q(A)), where q(A) = mina
j
: j
N
m
, we consider a set
(, A) :=
_
A
R
m
+
: [ a
j
a
j
[ , j N
m
_
.
27
For an optimal solution t

T(A, B) and [0, q(A)), the
value of the stability function is dened as follows:
S(t
, ) := max
A
(,A)
(t
, A
, B).
In a similar way, for a given [0, 1), we consider a set
(, A) :=
_
A
R
m
+
: [ a
j
a
j
[ a
j
, j N
m
_
.
For an optimal solution t

T(A, B) and [0, 1), the value
of the accuracy function is dened as follows:
A(t
, ) := max
A
(,A)
(t
, A
, B).
It is easy to check that S(t
, ) 0 for any [0, q(A))

as well as A(t
, ) 0 for each [0, 1).

The following theorem gives analytical formulae for cal-
culating stability and accuracy functions.
Theorem 1: The following statements are true.
(i) For an optimal solution t

T(A, B) and [0, q(A)),
the stability function can be expressed by the formula:
S(t
, ) = max
t

W(t
,A,B)
_
q(t
, t, A, B)+
m
j=1
[ b
t
(j)
b
t(j)
[
_
.
(ii) For an optimal solution t

T(A, B) and [0, 1),
the accuracy function can be expressed by the formula:
A(t
, ) = max
t

W(t
,A,B)
_
q(t
, t, A, B)+
j=1
a
j
[ b
t
(j)
b
t(j)
[
_
.
Proof. We prove (i) rst. Let t

T(A, B). Using the
denitions of stability function and absolute error as well as
property of max operator, we have
S(t
, ) = max
A
(,A)
(t
, A
, B) =
max
A
(,A)
max
t

W(t
,A,B)
q(t
, t, A
, B) =
max
t

W(t
,A,B)
max
A
(,A)
q(t
, t, A
, B).
Once t

W(t
, A, B) is xed, max
A
(,A)
q(t
, t, A
, B) is
attained at vector

A with elements a
j
= a
j
if b
t
(j)
b
t(j)
<
0, and a
j
= a
j
+ if b
t
(j)
b
t(j)
> 0, and we set a
j
= a
j
otherwise.
Then we continue
max
t

W(t
,A,B)
max
A
(,A)
q(t
, t, A
, B) =
max
t

W(t
,A,B)
q(t
, t,

A, B) =
max
t

W(t
,A,B)
_
q(t
, t, A, B) +
m
j=1
[ b
t
(j)
b
t(j)
[
_
.
The last formally ends the proof of (i). Now we prove (ii).
Indeed, repeating the same steps as above it will be sufcient
to notice that once t

W(t
, A, B) is xed,
max
A
(,A)
q(t
, t, A
, B)
is attained at vector

A with elements a
j
= (1)a
j
if b
t
(j)
b
t(j)
< 0, and a
j
= (1 +)a
j
if b
t
(j)
b
t(j)
> 0, and we set
a
j
= a
j
otherwise. So, we get directly
A(t
, ) = max
t

W(t
,A,B)
max
A
(,A)
q(t
, t, A
, B) =
max
t

W(t
,A,B)
q(t
, t,

A, B) =
max
t

W(t
,A,B)
_
q(t
, t, A, B) +
m
j=1
a
j
[ b
t
(j)
b
t(j)
[
_
.
This ends the proof.
Notice that analytical formulae specied in theorem 1
are based on enumerating all solutions t

W(t
, A, B), so
in general they are hard to be computed. It is also clear
that stability and accuracy functions are continuous piecewise
linear functions of their arguments and respectively.
Now consider the case when t

T(A, B) is a nontrivial
optimal substitution in the original problem Z(T, A, B) im-
plying S(t
, 0) = 0 and A(t
, 0) = 0. It is of special interest
to know the extreme values of [0, q(A)) and [0, 1)
for which S(t
, ) = 0 and A(t
, ) = 0, respectively. These
values determine maximum norms of perturbations which
preserve the property of the given solution to be an optimum.
They are close analogues of the so-called stability and accu-
racy radii introduced earlier for single and multiple objective
combinatorial optimization problems (see e.g. [1]). Formally,
the stability and accuracy radii RS(t
, A) and RA(t
, A) are
dened in the following way:
RS(t
, A) = sup
_
[0, q(A)) : S(t
, ) = 0
_
,
RA(t
, A) = sup
_
[0, 1) : A(t
, ) = 0
_
.
If these radii are equal to zero, then there exists arbitrary
small perturbations of the original vector A such that the
initial optimum t
loses its optimality under such perturba-

tions. Otherwise, the solution t
remains optimality for any

problem with vector A
(, A), < RS(t
, A), or
A
(, A), < RA(t
, A).
It is clear, that if t
is a trivial optimum, so its stability

(accuracy) radius is always equal to the maximum admis-
sible level of perturbations, i.e. RS(t
, A) = q(A), and
RA(t
, A) = 1. The next result, which is a straightforward

consequence of theorem 1, species expressions for stability
and accuracy radii of nontrivial optima.
Theorem 2: The following statements are true.
(i) For an optimal solution t

T(A, B), its stability radius
can be expressed by the formula:
RS(t
, A) = min
_
q(A), min
tW(t
,A,B)
q(t, t
, A, B)
m
j=1
[ b
t
(j)
b
t(j)
[
_
.
28
(ii) For an optimal solution t

T(A, B), its accuracy
radius can be expressed by the formula:
RA(t
, A) = min
_
1, min
tW(t
,A,B)
q(t, t
, A, B)
m
j=1
a
j
[ b
t
(j)
b
t(j)
[
_
.
We illustrate calculating stability and accuracy functions as
well as corresponding radii using the following example.
Example 2: Let the primitives be the same as in the pre-
vious example. Since t
1

T(A, b) is the only nontrivial opti-
mumin the problem, we calculate W(t
, A, B) = t
2
, . . . , t
6
,
W(t
, A, B) = T = t
1
, t
2
, . . . , t
6
, [0, 1), [0, 1), and
hence corresponding values computed according to analytical
formulae specied by theorems 1 and 2 are the following:
S(t
, ) = max0, 1 + 2; RS(t
, A) = 0.5;
A(t
, ) = max0, 3 + 7, 1 + 3, 7 + 13,
5 + 9, 8 + 12; RA(t
, A) =
1
3
.
The meaning of numerical values of RS(t
, A) and
RA(t
, A) will become even more transparent if we recall

that the problem is a single machine job processing problem
where optimal job processing sequence should obey shortest
processing time rst rule. In these terms, RS(t
, A), t
=
(1, 2, 3), should be equal to a maximum value of [0, 1)
such that (1 , 2 , 5 ) keeps the ordering that the
rst job has the smallest processing time, the second job has
the second smallest processing time, and the third job has the
largest processing time. Obviously, such a value is = 0.5
Analogously, RA(t
, A), t
= (1, 2, 3), should be equal to a

maximum value of [0, 1) such that (1 1, 2 2, 5 5)
keeps the ordering that the rst job has the smallest processing
time, the second job has the second smallest processing time,
and the third job has the largest processing time. Obviously,
such a value is =
1
3
.
Notice also that in [9], [10] an uncertain single machine
scheduling problem with a criterion of minimization the
weighted ow time is considered and attacked using some
alternative tools of sensitivity analysis, such as dominance and
stability box.
IV. CONCLUSION
The results presented in previous sections suggest that
small changes or inaccuracies in estimating basic problem
data may have signicant inuence on the set of optima
preserving or destroying their optimality. The simplest measure
of the solutions robustness is its stability and accuracy radius.
But frequently having just a value of radius is not sufcient
to rank the optima. Therefore, it is necessary to calculate
complementary more general characteristics of solutions like
stability and accuracy functions (see e.g. [7]). The other big
challenge in robust and sensitivity analysis is to construct
efcient algorithms to calculate the analytical expressions. To
the best of our knowledge there are not so many results (see
e.g. [6]) known in that area, and moreover some of those
results which have been already known, put more questions
than answers. It seems that calculating exact values is an
extremely difcult task in general, so one could concentrate
on either nding easy computable classes of problems or
developing general metaheuristic approaches. Indeed, practi-
cal verication of stability conditions, calculating quantitative
measures such as stability and accuracy radii (or functions)
as well as nding robust solutions in general case can be at
least as hard as to solve the problem itself (or even much
harder). Nevertheless more methodological results might be
developed and implemented for special cases of combinatorial
optimization and scheduling problems with restrictions to
some factors, such as structure of initial data, perturbations
of particular problem parameters etc. As possible continuation
of the research within this topic, it would be interesting to
explore all these possibilities.
Acknowledgements
The results presented in this work were obtained during
authors visit to the Gran o-Centre at Tartu, Estonia. The visit
became possible thank to kindly provided support from the
Turku University Foundation.
REFERENCES
[1] V. Emelichev, E. Girlich, Y. Nikulin, D. Podkopaev, (2002). Stability
and regularization of vector problems of integer linear programming.
Optimization 51, 645 676.
[2] V. Emelichev, D. Podkopaev, (2010). Quantitative stability analysis for
vector problems of 0-1 programming. Discrete Optimization 7, 48
63.
[3] H. Greenberg, (1998). An annotated bibliography for post-solution
analysis in mixed integer and combinatorial optimization. In D.
Woodruff (ed.), Advances in computational and stochastic optimization,
Logic programming and heuristic search, 97 148.
[4] M. Libura, (1999). On accuracy of solution for combinatorial optimiza-
tion problems with perturbed coefcients of the objective function.
Annals of Operation Research 86, 53 62.
[5] M. Libura, Y. Nikulin, (2006). Stability and accuracy functions in
multicriteria linear combinatorial optimization problems. Annals of
Operations Research 147, 255 267.
[6] M. Libura, E.S. van der Poort, G. Sierksma, J.A.A van der Veen, (1998).
Stability aspects of the traveling salesman problem based on k-best
solutions, Discrete Applied Mathematics 87, 159 185.
[7] Y. Nikulin, O. Karelkina, M.M. M akel a, (2013). On accuracy, robustness
and tolerances in vector Boolean optimization. European Journal of
Operational Research 224, 449 457.
[8] M. Pinedo, Scheduling: Theory, Algorithms, and Systems, Prentice-Hall,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA, 1996.
[9] Y.N. Sotskov, T.-C. Lai, (2012) Minimizing total weighted ow time
under uncertainty using dominance and a stability box. Computers and
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weighted ow time of a set of jobs with interval processing times,
Mathematical and Computer Modelling 50, 556 573.
29
Equilibrium Based Flow Control
in Wireless Networks with Moving Users
Igor V. Konnov
Department of System Analysis and
Information Technologies,
Kazan Federal University,
Kazan, 420008 Russia
Email: konn-igor@yandex.ru
Erkki Laitinen
Department of Mathematical Sciences
University of Oulu
90014 Oulu, Finland
Email: erkki.laitinen@oulu.
Olga Pinyagina
Department of Data Analysis
and Operations Research
Kazan Federal University
Kazan 420008, Russia
Email: Olga.Piniaguina@ksu.ru
AbstractWe rst consider a general problem of information
ows distribution calculation in a communication network with
moving nodes. By using approximations of frequency values
for nodes we formulate the above problem as a non-stationary
variational inequality which also reduces to an optimization one.
By solving each approximate problem within some tolerances
we create a sequence of ows tending to a solution to the basic
stationary problem.
Index TermsCommunication wireless networks, moving
nodes, ows distribution, equilibrium approach, non-stationary
optimization, iterative methods.
I. INTRODUCTION
The class of network ow control problems in communica-
tion networks is rather large and thoroughly investigated; see,
e.g., [1]. Recently, the development of wireless telecommu-
nication networks which provide faster availability and better
information quality, support a wide range of new services.
However, their behavior is rather complex, they have new
specic features such as the absence of predened physical
links between nodes, mobility of nodes, and boundedness of
the batteries capacity caused a lot of new problems; see, e.g.,
[2]. Because of the stochastic character of nodes movement
and absence of any central decision maker, the most solution
methods for such problems are mostly heuristic, hence their
substantiation is deduced from simulation procedures. How-
ever, we believe that optimization and equilibrium approaches
based on the corresponding mathematical models may be
useful for creation of more efcient network control decisions.
In this paper, we treat a problem of ows distribution
in a communication network with moving nodes as a non-
stationary variational inequality via a suitable equilibrium
approach. That is, we calculate (on-line) frequency values
for nodes to be at cells constituting the network region as
approximations of the corresponding probabilities. In turn,
this variational inequality also reduces to an optimization
one. This approach can be viewed as further development of
that from [3], where each moving (user) node was treated
In this work, the rst author was supported by grant No. 259488 from
Academy of Finland and by the RFBR grant, project No. 13-01-00029a. The
second author was supported by grant No. 259488 from Academy of Finland.
The third author was supported by the RFBR grant, project No. 13-01-00029a.
as an independent Markovian chain. In fact, it enables us to
cover much more general classes of applications. Next, by
solving each approximate optimization problem within some
tolerances we create a sequence of ows tending to a solution
to the basic problem of ows distribution.
II. STATIC NETWORK EQUILIBRIUM MODEL
The model is determined on a communication network
involving a nite set of nodes (users) A, who are distributed
within a region !, which is supposed to be rectangular for
simplicity. That is, ! is represented by an m n matrix,
whose elements are equal square cells c
ij
for i = 1, . . . , m
and j = 1, . . . , n. Next, we select a subset of origin-destination
(O/D) pairs J among all the pairs of users, i.e. J A A.
First we describe the model for the static case where the
network has some pre-dened and xed topology given by
a set of communication links (arcs) / which join the users
(nodes); see, e.g., [1], [4], [5]. This means that each user has
xed position in !. Hence, for each pair w J one can
dene the set of paths T
w
joining this pair via the path-arc
incidence matrix A with the elements
pa
=
_
1 if arc a belongs to path p,
0 otherwise.
Besides, each (O/D) pair w J is associated with a non-
negative ow demand b
w
. Denote by x
p
the path ow for
path p. Then, the feasible set of network path ows is dened
as follows:
X =
pP
w
x
p
= b
w
, x
p
0, p T
w
, w J
. (1)
The set X has very simple structure. Namely, it is the Cartesian
product of the simplices. We should now dene a cost function.
Given ow values x
p
, one can determine the value of the arc
ow
f
a
=
wW
pP
w
pa
x
p
(2)
for each arc a /. We assume that for each link a we know
a continuous function T
a
, whose value T
a
(f
a
) represents the
delay in traversing link a with one unit of ow when the ow
value on this arc is f
a
or the marginal delay for this arc in
30
the communication network. The summary cost at path ows
vector x for path p has the form:
G
p
(x) =
aA
pa
T
a
(f
a
).
The equilibrium condition for such a network is formulated
as follows. The feasible ow vector x
X is said to be an
equilibrium vector if it satises the following conditions:
w J, q T
w
, x
q
> 0 =G
q
(x
) = min
pP
w
G
p
(x
).
This formulation is based on the user-optimization principle,
which asserts that a network equilibrium is established when
no OD pair may decrease his/her traveling cost by making
the unilateral decision to change his/her routes. However, it is
equivalent to the variational inequality problem (VI for short):
Find x
X such that
G(x
), x x
(3)
=
wW
pP
w
G
p
(x
)(x
p
x
p
) 0 x X.
Moreover, due to the diagonality and continuity of the map-
pings T
a
, they must be integrable, i.e. there exist the functions
a
(f
a
) =
f
a
_
0
T
a
()d
for a /. Then we can replace VI (3) by the optimization
problem:
min
xX
wW
pP
w
aA
pa
a
(f
a
), (4)
where f
a
is dened in (2). That is, each solution of (4) solves
(3), but the reverse assertion is true if each T
a
is monotone.
There exist many iterative methods for solving VI (3) or
problem (4), they are mostly closely related with gradient
projection or conditional gradient ones; see, e.g., [6], [1], [4],
[5]. They enables one to nd a solution within any prescribed
accuracy > 0 in a nite number of iterations. As a stopping
criterion, one can use the condition that the distance between
the neighbor iteration points does not exceed a given value .
III. DYNAMIC NETWORK EQUILIBRIUM MODEL
Now we turn to the general dynamic case where users can
change their positions within the region !. Note that networks
with complex and non-stationary behavior of users (nodes)
are typical for modern wireless communication systems; see
e.g. [2]. Then the above classical formulation of the network
equilibrium problem is not applicable because we do not know
the topology of the communication network, in particular, the
sets of arcs / and paths T
w
and the path-arc incidence matrix
A. Moreover, the delay value T
a
(f
a
) becomes also unknown.
In order to overcome these difculties, each moving (user)
node was suggested to be treated as an independent Markovian
chain [3]. That is, the basic time period was divided into equal
slots t = 1, 2, . . ., so that knowing the initial probabilities
for each user to be in cells and transition probabilities one
can calculate probabilities for each user to be in each cell
for any time slot and stationary probabilities. By introducing
a suitable audibility threshold value one can calculate the
topology data and delay function values and utilize them
in a modied network equilibrium model; see also [7], [8].
However, this approach has certain restrictions because only
Markovian chains without periodic classes can have stationary
probabilities; see, e.g., [9].
Now we intend to extend the previous approach to more
general classes of applications. To this end, we propose to
calculate (on-line) frequency values for nodes to be in cells
constituting the network region as approximations of the
corresponding probabilities.
Thus, we suppose that all the users can move within the
region !, but only one transition (cell change) is possible
during one time slot. The current state of user i at time slot t
is described by the matrix
P
(i,t)
=
_
(i,t)
kl
_
(5)
where
(i,t)
k,l
denotes the current frequency probability for the
i-th user to be in cell c
kl
at time slot t for k = 1, . . . , m and
l = 1, . . . , n. Hence, if the i-th user was s(t) times in cell c
kl
for time slots k = 1, 2, . . . , t, then
(i,t)
k,l
= s(t)/t. Clearly,
m
k=1
n
l=1
(i,t)
kl
= 1
for any i and t. The initial matrix P
(i,1)
can be dened as
follows
(i,1)
kl
=
_
1 if the i-th user is in cell c
kl
,
0 otherwise;
i.e., elements of the matrix are dened by the initial position
of each user.
(Assumption 1) In what follows we assume that the
sequence of matrices
_
P
(i,t)
_
tends to some stable (limit)
probability distribution matrix
P
(i)
=
_

(i)
kl
_
as t for each i A. Clearly, this assumption is weaker
essentially than those in [3].
We suggest to take the (limit) stationary probabilities for
creating the network equilibrium problem, which is still based
on model (1)(3) similarly to the Markovian chain approach.
So, given the matrix

P
(i)
, we introduce for simplicity a
distance threshold and then for each pair of nodes i, j we
calculate the mean distance
u
ij
=
m
k=1
n
l=1
m
=1
n
=1

(i)
kl

(j)
((k, l), (, )),

where ((k, l), (, )) denotes the distance between the cen-
ters of cells (k, l) and (, ). Hence, if u
ij
, then arc
a = (i, j) is included in the set of communication links

/.
31
In such a way we determine the path-arc incidence matrix

A
with the elements

pa
=
_
0 otherwise;
and, for any selected (O/D) pair w J we can dene the
set of paths

T
w
joining this pair. As above, we also denote by
b
w
non-negative ow demand for this pair and by x
p
the path
ow for path p. Then, the feasible set of network path ows
is dened as follows:
X =
P
w
x
p
= b
w
, x
p
0, p

T
w
, w J
. (6)
Next, we determine the value of the arc ow
f
a
=
wW
P
w

pa
x
p
(7)
for each arc a

/. We assume that for each link a = (i, j) and
for each pair of cells (k, l) and (, ) we know a continuous
function T
{(k,l),(,)}
a
, whose value T
{(k,l),(,)}
a
(f
a
) gives the
delay in traversing link a with one unit of ow when user i is
situated in cell (k, l), user j is situated in cell (, ), and the
ow value on this arc is f
a
. The summary cost at path ows
vector x for path p has the form:
G
p
(x) =
m
k=1
n
l=1
m
=1
n
=1

a=(i,j)

A

(i)
kl

(j)

pa
T
{(k,l),(,)}
a
(f
a
)
.
The equilibrium condition for the network is formulated as
above. Hence, we can replace it by the following VI: Find
x

X such that
G(x
), x x
(8)
=
wW
P
w
G
p
(x
)(x
p
x
p
) 0 x

X;
cf. (1)(3). Besides, by using the integrability of T
a
, we can
also associate (6)(8) with a suitable optimization problem as
in (4).
However, the limit matrix

P
(i)
remains unknown for us and
we can not solve problem (6)(8) directly. Nevertheless, we
can utilize its approximation at time slot t by using the matrix
P
(i,t)
in (5) for t = 1, 2, . . .
In fact, for each pair of nodes i, j we can now calculate the
mean distance
u
(t)
ij
=
m
k=1
n
l=1
m
=1
n
=1
(i,t)
kl

(j,t)
((k, l), (, )).

If u
(t)
ij
for the distance threshold , then arc a = (i, j)
is included in the set of communication links /
(t)
which
approximate the set

/ for time slot t. After we determine
the path-arc incidence matrix A
(t)
with the elements
(t)
pa
=
_
0 otherwise;
and, for any selected (O/D) pair w J we can dene the
set of paths T
(t)
w
joining this pair. As above, we denote by b
w
non-negative ow demand for this pair and by x
(t)
p
the path
ow for path p. Then, we dene the t-th approximation of the
feasible set
X
(t)
=
x
(t)
pP
(t)
w
x
(t)
p
= b
w
,
x
(t)
p
0, p T
(t)
w
, w J
. (9)
and value of the arc ow
f
(t)
a
=
wW
pP
(t)
w
(t)
pa
x
(t)
p
(10)
for each arc a /
(t)
. We also assume that for each link
a = (i, j) and for each pair of cells (k, l) and (, ) there
exists a continuous delay function T
{(k,l),(,)}
a
and dene the
summary cost at path ows vector x
(t)
for path p
G
(t)
p
(x
(t)
) =
m
k=1
n
l=1
m
=1
n
=1

a=(i,j)A
(t)
(i,t)
kl

(j,t)

(t)
pa
T
{(k,l),(,)}
a
(f
(t)
a
)
.
The network equilibrium problem is then written in the form
of the following VI: Find x
(t,)
X
(t)
such that
G
(t)
(x
(t,)
), x
(t)
x
(t,)
wW
pP
(t)
w
G
(t)
p
(x
)(x
(t)
p
x
(t,)
p
) 0 (11)
x
(t)
X
(t)
;
it represents the t-th approximation of the limit VI (6)(8).
Clearly, the dynamic network can change its topology over
time, but we add only one additional connectivity assumption,
which indicates that the threshold is chosen properly.
(Assumption 2) For each (O/D) pair w J there exists at
least one simple chain of directed links from /
(t)
connecting
the origin and destination nodes for each t = 1, 2, . . .
Thus, instead of the basic limit VI (6)(8) we have a se-
quence of its approximations of form (9)(11) for t = 1, 2, . . .
Such problems are called non-stationary; see, e.g., [10, Ch.
VI]. Recently, new convergence results for inexact solutions of
approximate problems to a solution of the limit non-stationary
problem were established under rather mild conditions in [11],
[12].
IV. SOLUTION METHOD
Being based on the previous results, we suggest a two-
level method for the basic VI (6)(8), which allows us to
successively obtain approximations of equilibrium distribution
of network ows, consecutively collecting and using the infor-
mation about network users behavior changes. Each iteration
of the method corresponds to some time slot t, whereas a
lower level method solves the t-th approximate VI (9)(11)
within some tolerances.
32
Upper Level Method.
Step 0. Let some number > 0 and a sequence of positive
numbers
t
(tolerances), and probability matrices P
(1,i)
for
each i A be given. We set t = 1 and choose an initial point
y
(1)
X
(1)
.
Step 1. Using the point y
(t)
we solve VI (11) by Algorithm
P described below within the tolerance
t
and obtain an
approximate solution denoted by x
(t,
t
)
.
Step 2. We make the transition to the next state of the
network. We nd new positions of users and calculate the
matrices P
(i,t+1)
for all i A.
Step 3. If |P
(i,t)
P
(i,t+1)
| < for all i A, then
we obtain the desired accuracy of calculations and stop the
iterative process. Otherwise we set y
(t+1)
= x
(t,
t
)
, t = t +1
and go to Step 1.
We suggest the following version of the gradient projection
method as Algorithm P for Step 1 of the upper level method.
For brevity, we denote by
(t)
the projection operator onto the
set X
(t)
.
Algorithm P.
Step 0. Let some tolerance
t
> 0, parameters (0, 1),
(0, 1), and an initial point z
0
X
(t)
be given. We set
k = 0.
Step 1. If |z
k

(t)
[z
k
G
(t)
(z
k
)]| = 0, then we obtain
the solution to problem (11) and stop the process.
Step 2. We nd the smallest nonnegative integer m which
satises the inequality
G
(t)
(z
k,m
), z
k,m
z
k
G
(t)
(z
k
), z
k,m
z
k
,
where z
k,m
=
(t)
[z
k
m
G
(t)
(z
k
)].
Step 3. We set z
k+1
= z
k,m
. If |z
k+1
z
k
|
t
, we obtain
the desired accuracy and stop the iterative process. Otherwise
we set k = k + 1 and go to Step 1.
We observe that the initial point z
0
in Algorithm P is taken
from y
(t)
by some adjustment, say, as its projection onto X
(t)
.
V. COMPUTATIONAL EXPERIMENTS
In order to verify the method proposed we performed
preliminary numerical experiments on test problems, varying
parameters related to dimensionality and accuracy. For the
sake of simplicity we took the parameter large enough so
that each pair of nodes was connected by two opposite-directed
links, i.e. we have full graphs. Also, we took simple neighbor
walking rules for moving users. The parameters of Algorithm
P were taken as follows: = 0.5, = 0.5, besides we chose
t
= max1/t, 10
4
. We report the total number of iterations
and calculation time. The results of computations for different
data are given in Table V. The numerical experiments were
conducted using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (C++) and the
hardware platform AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual, 2.3 GHz, 2 Gb.
In general, the results show rather satisfactory convergence.
N = 20 N = 40
0.01 88 it., <1 s 87 it., 3 s
0.001 866 it., 2 s 866 it., 30 s
0.0001 8660 it., 20 s 8660 it., 322 s
TABLE I
TEST PARAMETERS: N IS THE TOTAL NUMBER OF NODES, IS THE
CHOSEN ACCURACY.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
We considered a problem of ows distribution in a com-
munication network with moving nodes as a non-stationary
variational inequality via a suitable equilibrium approach.
This approach enables us to cover very general classes of
applications. Inexact solutions of each approximate problem
yields a sequence of ows tending to a solution to the
basic problem of ows distribution. We suggested a two-level
method for the basic problem, which allows us to successively
obtain approximations of this ows distribution. The numerical
experiments showed the applicability of the proposed approach
to wireless networks with dynamic structure.
REFERENCES
[1] D. Bertsekas and R. Gallager, Data Networks, Prentice Hall, Englewood
Cliffs, 1987.
[2] X. Cheng, X. Huang, and D.-Z. Du, Eds., Ad Hoc Wireless Networking,
Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2004.
[3] I.V. Konnov and O. A. Kashina, Optimization based ow control in
communication networks with moving nodes, Proc. of The Fourth
Moscow Conf. on Operat. Res., MaxPress, Moscow, 2004, pp.116118.
[4] A. Nagurney, Network Economics: A Variational Inequality Approach,
Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1999.
[5] I.V. Konnov, Equilibrium Models and Variational Inequalities, Elsevier,
Amsterdam, 2007.
[6] D. Bertsekas, Projection methods for variational inequalities with
application to the trafc assignment problem, Math. Progr. Study, 1982,
vol.17, pp.139159.
[7] I.V. Konnov, O.A. Kashina, and K. Lieska, Optimization based ow
control in communication networks, in Proc. of Europ. Congr. on
Comput. Meth. and Eng., ECCOMAS 2004, Jyvaskyla, 2004, pp.19
(http://www.mit.jyu./eccomas2004/proceedings/pdf/1010.pdf).
[8] I.V. Konnov, O.A. Kashina, and E. Laitinen, Two-level decomposition
method for resource allocation in telecommunication network, Int. J.
Digit. Inf. and Wirel. Comm., 2012, vol.2, no. 2, pp.150155.
[9] J.G. Kemeny and J.L. Snell, Finite Markov Chains, Van Nostrand,
Princeton, 1960.
[10] B.T. Polyak, Introduction to Optimization. Nauka, Moscow, 1983; En-
glish transl. in Optimization Software, New York, 1987.
[11] I.V. Konnov, Application of the penalty method to non-stationary
approximation of an optimization problem, Russ. Mathem. (Iz. VUZ),
to appear.
[12] I.V. Konnov, Application of penalty methods to non-stationary varia-
tional inequalities, Nonl. Anal. (submitted).
33
Economic Growth in a Network under Mutual
Dependence of Agents
Yury P. Martemyanov, Vladimir D. Matveenko
Center for Market Studies and Spatial Economics
National Research University Higher School of Economics
Moscow, Russia
ymartemyanov@hse.ru, vmatveenko@hse.ru
AbstractWe consider a dependence of the growth rate on
the elasticity of factor substitution in a framework of a model of
mutual dependence of n agents. This model is interpreted as a
network structure and can be used to analyze agglomerations.
The development is modeled as an increase in values of the agents
in a dynamic system with CES functions. We investigate the cases
of high and low complementarity of activities. In particular, we
receive conditions allowing the identification of the cases when
the elasticity of factor substitution has a positive effect on the
growth rate under high complementarity of activities, and when
the elasticity of factor substitution has a negative effect on the
growth rate under low complementarity of activities.
Keywords Agglomeration, Weak Links, Network Structure,
Externalities, Production Functions, Growth Rate.
I. INTRODUCTION
The dependence on the growth rate on the elasticity of
substitution has been studied previously in a framework of the
economic growth theory (see, e.g., [1], [2]). We consider this
issue in relation to a model of mutual dependence of n agents,
which can be used to study dynamics of agglomerations.
Agglomeration is a complex network structure, which
includes relationships among aggregated agents, such as
economic sectors in a city (for instance, road networks,
bridges, public transportation, housing, medicine, etc.), control
structures, as well as industrial, professional and social
networks which are included into the greater network as
components. Methods of network analysis, which come back to
[3], have become an important tool for analysis of the economy
(see [4]). Research of recent decades emphasizes the
importance of weak links for economic systems ([5], [6]) as
well as of the higher order relationships causing a cascade
effect ([7]). Economic growth rates are associated with a
presence of weak links, and the latter are often associated with
inadequate size of existing positive externalities. Network
structures with positive externalities are particularly important
in cities and agglomerations. Eigenvectors and eigenvalues has
a special place in many network models (see, e.g., [8], [4], [7]).
The role of their idempotent
1
counterparts is shown by [9].
II. THE MODEL
We consider a network consisting of n agents. The state of
agent i at time t is described by one number the value of the
agent, x
i
(t). The initial values of agents, x
i
(0), i=1,,n, are
specified. The development is modeled as an increase in the
values of agents in a dynamic system with CES functions:
, (1)
where .
As usually for production functions, it is assumed that
. Cases p<0 and p>0 are interpreted,
respectively, as cases of high and low complementarity of
activities of different agents. Coefficients a
ij
and A
ij
can
reflect, in particular a power of positive externalities created
by agents j and useful for agents i. The system (1) can be
written in matrix form:
where is a square matrix with non-negative elements:
;
is the vector of degrees of states of agents in the period t; T is a
sign of transposition.
A pattern of the dynamics is determined by the structure of
the matrix . We assume that this matrix is irreducible and
primitive. Let be its Frobenius eigenvalue. Then
,
where is a Frobenius eigenvector. Consequently,
,
where ; the number represents
1
A binary operation on a set M is called idempotent if
a a a = for each M ae . Such are the operations max and
min .
The research is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research
(project 11-01-00878a).
34
the growth factor of the model. We investigate the dependence
of on the elasticity of substitution,
;
the latter varies, obviously, in the same direction as p.
III. SOME ANALYTICAL RESULTS
3.1. If A
ij
=1 for all i,j=1,,n, then the matrix and its
Frobenius eigenvalue do not depend on p.
Proposition 1: If A
ij
1 (i=1,,n, j=1,,n) and the matrix
provides economic growth, then: 1) the elasticity of factor
substitution has a positive effect on the growth rate under high
complementarity of activities; 2) the elasticity of factor
substitution has a negative effect on the growth rate under low
complementarity of activities.
Proof. Direction of dependence of the growth rate on the
elasticity of substitution depends on the sign of the derivative
. (2)
The presence of the growth means that >1. If p<0 (there is a
high complementarity of activities), then , hence
the right side of (2) is positive, and . Conversely, if p>0
(low complementarity), , and hence . Q.E.D.
3.2. If A
ij
<1 for all i,j=1,,n, then each element of the
matrix is decreasing in p, hence (see Debreu and Herstein,
1953) Frobenius eigenvalue is decreasing in p, that is .
Proposition 2: If, for all A
ij
<1, the matrix provides
economic growth, then elasticity of factor substitution has a
positive effect on the growth rate under high complementarity
of activities.
Proof. Direction of dependence of the growth rate on the
elasticity of substitution is determined by the sign of the
derivative
. (3)
We have >1 (the presence of growth) and p<0 (high
complementarity), it follows . Thus, each of the two
terms on the right-hand side of (3) is positive, and hence '>0.
Q.E.D.
3.3. If , i=1,,n, then in the limit S0 the
system (1) is transformed into a system with Cobb-Douglas
functions:
(4)
The trajectory is called balanced if
,
for all i=1,,n, t=0, 1, Then
.
Proposition 3: The trajectory of (4) converges to a balanced
one.
Proof. Taking the logarithms, the system (4) can be written
as follows:
X(t+1)=b+AX(t),
where ; A is matrix with elements (o
ij
),
and X(t) are vectors of logatithms. We express sequentially
, :
X(1)=b+AX(0),
X(2)= b+AX(1)=b+Ab+A
2
X(0),
X(3)=b+AX(2)=b+Ab+A
2
b+A
3
X(0),
X(t)=(E+A+A
2
++A
t-1
)b+A
t
X(0).
Then
X(t+1)X(t)=A
t
[b+(AE)X(0)].
Since the matrix A is stochastic, as W the sequence of
matrices A
t
converges to a matrix with identical rows, hence
X(t+1)X(t) converges to a vector with identical elements, we
write it as . Hence,
,
and then
,
i=1,,n. Q.E.D.
In the special case when n=2 and , we find:
,
thus, the growth rate is described by the Cobb-Douglas
function of the efficiencies of the productive sectors;
,
thus, the higher the relative productivity of a sector is, the
larger the proportion of this sector in the structure of balanced
economy is.
3.4. If , i=1,,n, then in the limit at S
CES function (1) converges to Leontief production function,
and our model is transformed into the model introduced in
Matveenko, 1995:
.
In terms of tropical (idempotent) mathematic this system
can be written as X(t+1)=AX(t), where AX(t) is a
multiplication of matrices with operations = x, + = min.
Growth factor, , is an idempotent eigenvalue; the
corresponding network analysis is provided in Matveenko,
1990, 2009. The growth rate can be calculated, in particular, by
35
Fig. 1. The dependence of on p if oi1+ oi2 and p<0.
indicating an optimal subgraph; the latter is an analog of a
turnpike in economic dynamic models.
IV. THE RESULTS OF NUMERICAL EXPERIMENTS
In general, analytical results are difficult to obtain, however
the numerical analysis of trajectories shows patterns of
dependence of the growth factor, , on the parameters o
ij
and p.
The nature of the dynamics of the system can radically change
even with a small change in one parameter. Consider the
example of matrix
and the initial vector X(0) such that if p<0, then all the
coordinates are non-zero, and if p>0, then at least one
coordinate is non-zero.
A. If p<0
1) If o
i1
+ o
i2
: increases in p (see Fig. 1).
2) If o
i1
+ o
i2
>1: decreases in p (see Fig. 2).
B. If p
1) If o
i1
+ o
i2
: growth rate converges to the
idempotent eigenvalue equal to 1.1, above (see Fig. 1).
Fig. 2. The dependence of on p if oi1+ oi2>1 and p<0.
Fig. 3. The dependence of on p if oi1+ oi2 and p>0.
2) If o
i1
+ o
i2
>1: growth rate converges to 1.1 below
(see Fig. 2).
C. If p>0
1) If o
i1
+ o
i2
: increases in p (see Fig. 3).
2) If o
i1
+ o
i2
>1: decreases in p (see Fig. 4).
D. Case p=0: this point is the break point of the 2nd kind.
1) If p0(left):
a) If o
i1
+ o
i2
: (see Fig. 1).
b) If o
i1
+ o
i2
>1: 0 (see Fig. 2).
2) If p0+ (right):
a) If o
i1
+ o
i2
: 0+ (see Fig. 3).
b) If o
i1
+ o
i2
>1: (see Fig. 4).
V. CONCLUSION
We investigated the dependence of the growth rate on the
elasticity of factor substitution in a framework of a model of
mutual dependence of n agents. We obtained some analytical
and numerical results under high and low complementarity of
activities. We received some conditions allowing the
identification of the cases when the elasticity of factor
substitution has a positive effect on the growth rate under high
Fig. 4. The dependence of on p if oi1+ oi2>1 and p>0.
36
complementarity of activities, and when the elasticity of factor
substitution has a negative effect on the growth rate under low
complementarity of activities.
REFERENCES
[1] O. de La Grandville, In quest of the Slutsky diamond, Am. Econ. Rev,
vol. 79(3), pp.468-481, 1989.
[2] T. Palivos and G. Karagiannis, The elasticity of substitution as an
engine of growth," Macroeconomic Dynamics, vol.14(5), pp.617-620,
2010.
[3] W. Leontief, The structure of American economy: 1919-1929: An
empirical application of equilibrium analysis, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1941.
[4] M.O. Jackson, Social and Economic Networks, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2008.
[5] M. Kremer, The O-ring theory of economic development, Quart. Jour.
Econ, vol. 108, pp.551-575, 1993.
[6] O. Blanchard and M. Kremer, Disorganization, Quart. Jour. Econ,
vol.112(1), pp.1091-1126, 1997.
[7] D. Acemoglu, V.M. Carvalho, A. Ozdaglar, and A. Tahbaz-Salehi, The
network origins of aggregate fluctuations, Econometrica, vol. 80(5),
pp.1977-2016, September 2012.
[8] C. Ballester, A. Calvo-Armengol, and Y. Zenou, Whos who in
networks. Wanted: the key player, Econometrica, vol. 74(5), pp. 1403-
1417, September 2006.
[9] V.D. Matveenko, Development with positive externalities: the case of
the Russian economy, Jour. of Policy Modeling, vol. 17(3), pp.207-
221, 1995.
[10] G. Debreu and I.N. Herstein, Nonnegative Square Matrices,
Econometrica, vol. 21(4), pp.597-607, 1953.
[11] V.D. Matveenko, Optimal trajectories of a dynamic programming
scheme and extremal degrees of nonnegative matrices, Diskretnaya
matematika, vol. 2(1), pp.59-71, 1990 (In Russian).
[12] V.D. Matveenko, Optimal paths in oriented graphs and eigenvectors in
max systems, Discrete Mathematics and Applications, vol.19(4),
pp.389-409, 2009.
37
Multi-expert multi-criteria ranking method that uses
scorecards, fuzzy heavy OWA, and similarity
measures.
Pasi Luukka and Mikael Collan
School of business
Lappeenranta, Finland
{pasi.luukka,mikael.collan}@lut.fi

AbstractThis paper proposes a new multi-expert multi-criteria
fuzzy decision making method for pre-selection of acquisition
targets. Experts evaluate each target by using a crisp scorecard.
The crisp scorecards are aggregated to yield one fuzzy scorecard.
Fuzzy heavy OWA is used to form an aggregated fuzzy scorecard
score. Targets are ranked by comparing their aggregated scores
to a fuzzy ideal solution by using a fuzzy similarity measure. The
method is capable of preserving information that relates to the
dispersion of the expert assessments of each scorecard criterion
and taking it into consideration in the ranking of alternatives.
Keywords-MCDM; fuzzy heavy OWA; ranking; fuzzy similarity
measure;
I. INTRODUCTION

Investments, projects, and other future-oriented assets that a
firm is contemplating to start suffer often from the availability
of less than perfect information. This is caused by the
complexity connected to the future and the (in)ability to assess
the future precisely. That is, both uncertainty and estimation
imprecision play a role in decision-making. Yet under these
circumstances managers are faced with the problem of
selecting the best investments, projects, or other assets among
many that compete for financing.

Problems of this type can be approached by involving
estimates from more than one expert, to obtain more than one
view of the future, by using methods that are able to consider
multiple relevant criteria to give an overall understanding, and
that are able to reflect uncertainty and imprecision, such as
fuzzy numbers [1, 2].

This paper presents a new method for multi-agent multi-
criteria ranking that uses fuzzy numbers to reflect uncertainty
and imprecision and that is able to preserve the information
contained within the fuzzy numbers until the final ranking of
alternatives.
The method is based on information collected by using
scorecards, a simple tool for collecting expert information
(evaluations) on multiple criteria with regards to the
alternatives under analysis. Scorecards were brought to fame
in mid-1990s by the introduction of the balanced scorecard
[3-5]. The method expects that multiple experts are used to
evaluate each alternative, thus resulting in multiple scorecard
evaluations per alternative. These crisp evaluations are merged
into one fuzzy evaluation that reflects the dispersion of the
experts evaluations and the result is in effect a fuzzy
scorecard. More on fuzzy scorecards can be found in, for
example [6].
The fuzzy scorecard score is aggregated by using fuzzy heavy
OWA [7] to allow the ordering of criteria based on expert
scores, using a totaling type operator that finds home in
scorecards, and weighing the scores according to preset
policies that allow, for example, penalization of low scores.
A simple method of comparing the fuzzy similarity of each
alternative to a reference ideal alternative is used in the
ranking of alternatives; the closer the alternative is to the
ideal alternative the better. Using this kind of a ranking
method is a new approach. Possible areas of application
include, for example, human resources selection, screening of
acquisition targets, and screening of funding applications.
This paper proceeds as follows: section II shortly introduces
the mathematical background, section III presents the
proposed method, section IV illustrates the method with a
numerical example, and section V concludes.
II. MATHEMATICAL BACKGROUND
A. Preliminaries
The following is a brief review of some definitions related to
the basic concepts that are essential to the proposed multi-
expert multi-criteria decision making (MEMCDM) model.

Definition 1. A triangular fuzzy number A can be defined by a
triplet (a
1
,a
2
,a
3
). The membership function
A
(x) is defined as
[6]
38
>
s s
s s
<
=
3
3 2
3 2
3
2 1
1 2
1
1
, 0
,
,
, 0
) (
a x
a x a
a a
a x
a x a
a a
a x
a x
x
A
(1)

Definition 2. The -cut of fuzzy number A is defined as

{ } X x x x A
i i A i
e > = , ) ( | o
o
(2)

where | | 1 , 0 e o . A
is a non-empty bounded closed interval

contained in X and it can be denoted by | |. ) ( ), ( o o
o
r l
a a A =
For arithmetic operations for triangular fuzzy numbers we
refer to [8].

B. Fuzzy Heavy OWA

An essential concept that is used in the proposed method is
fuzzy OWA [9-11]; more precisely the fuzzy heavy ordered
weighted averaging (FHOWA) operator introduced in [7] and
defined as follows:

Definition 3. Let U be the set of fuzzy numbers. A FHOWA
operator of dimension n is a mapping FHOWA: U
n
U that
has an associated weighting vector W of dimension n such that
the sum of the weights is between [1,n] and | | 1 , 0 e
i
w , then:
_
=
=
n
i
i i n
b w a a a FHOWA
1
2 1
) , , , ( (3)
where b
i
is the i-th largest of the (
n
a a a , , ,
2 1
), which are
now fuzzy triangular numbers of form definition 1.

Fuzzy heavy OWA operator requires a way to order fuzzy
numbers. For this we use the method presented by Kaufman
and Gupta in [12].

A linear order can be found by using different selected
properties of fuzzy numbers as criteria. Here three different
criteria are used for finding an order: if the first criterion does
not produce a strict linear order, then the second and
ultimately the third criterion are used. The three used criteria
are:

(i) Removal: Let us consider an ordinary number R k e and a
fuzzy number A. Left side removal of A with respect to k,
denoted by R
l
(A,k), is defined as the area bounded by k and
the left side of the fuzzy number A. Right side removal,
R
r
(A,k) is defined similarly. Removal of the fuzzy number A
with respect to k is defined as the mean of R
l
(A,k) and
R
r
(A,k). Thus,

(4)

The position of k can be located anywhere on the x-axis
including k = 0. Areas of fuzzy numbers, by definition, are
positive quantities, but here they are evaluated by integration,
taking into account the position (negative, zero, or positive) of
the variable x; therefore, R(A,k) can be positive, negative, or
null. The first criterion is removal with respect to k.

Figure 1: Removal number with regards to k. R
l
(A,k) is area of
A + area in between A and k. Rr(A,k) is area between A and k.
Figure is taken from [16].

Two different fuzzy numbers can have the same removal with
respect to the same k. In fact, this criterion decomposes a set
of fuzzy numbers into classes that have the same removal
number. If the origin 0 is conveniently moved to the left, it is
possible, in this case that all of the fuzzy numbers will have
positive removal numbers. Hence, the removal numbers
become positive, if k is correctly chosen. The removal number
with respect to a given k, therefore, can be taken as a measure
of distance and can be used for the ordering of the fuzzy
numbers. The removal number R(A,k) defined in this criterion,
relocated to k = 0 is equivalent to an "ordinary representative"
of the fuzzy number. In the case of a triangular fuzzy number
this ordinary representative is given by

(5)

where A = (a
1
, a
2
, a
3
).

(ii) Mode: In each class of fuzzy numbers one should look for
the mode. The modes can be used to generate sub-classes. If
the fuzzy numbers under consideration have a non-unique
mode, one takes the mean position of the modal values. It
must be noted that this is only one way of obtaining sub-
classes, and one may need a third divergence criterion for
further sub-classification. For the mode a usual choice is the
core value of the fuzzy number

e0Ax (6)
39

Mode in the case of triangular number reduces to Mode(A)=a
2
.

(iii) Divergence: If we consider in each sub-class, the
divergence around the mode, we obtain sub-sub-classes, and
this criterion may be sufficient to obtain the final strict linear
ordering of fuzzy numbers.

inf (7)

Divergence in the case of triangular number reduces to
Divergence(A)=(a
3
-a
1
).

When one orders fuzzy numbers to size order, one proceeds as
follows: apply the above presented criteria in the order (i)-(ii)-
(iii), such that if the strict linear order is not obtained, then
move to the next criterion.

C. Scorecard, fuzzy scorecard, and FHOWA

The evaluation of the criteria is normative and based on
incomplete information, due to the scarcity of information and
the need to keep the screening of acquisition targets unknown
to the targets themselves. This is why it makes sense to
include the normative estimate of many (here three) experts in
the target evaluation. The evaluation is done, by using crisp
scores to indicate the best estimate of each expert. Uncertainty
related to the estimates may be difficult or impossible to
estimate and would potentially require a lot of time. In the
proposed method a number of (in the example three) experts
use a scorecard to evaluate alternatives. In Table 1 there is an
example of how they apply the scorecard to evaluate
alternative 1.

Table 1: Scorecard evaluation of alternative 1 from three
decision makers with regards to five criteria.
Criteria DM
1
DM
2
DM
3

C1 7 5 4
C2 7 6 5
C3 9 10 9
C4 9 9 8
C5 9 8 7

After the evaluation of each alternative a fuzzy scorecard of
type [6] is created by using the three crisp evaluations to form
a fuzzy triangular number of the form given in equation (1).
The result is presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Fuzzy scorecard created from Table 1.
Criteria a
1
a
2
a
3

C1 4 5 7
C2 5 6 7
C3 9 9 10
C4 8 9 9
C5 7 8 9
Sum 33 37 42

In the fuzzy scorecard the fuzzy numbers coming from the
evaluation of different criteria are added together and the
obtained total value is later used in decision-making. This
makes the fuzzy scorecard a totaling type of operator that
provides distinct non-redundant information about the
candidate.

In fuzzy scorecard, all information available is used, as pieces
of information are independent of each other. The fact that
fuzzy scorecards are in some sense a totaling type operator
makes them different from averaging type operators; if one
would apply an averaging operator to fuzzy scorecards one
would lose this property for providing distinct non-redundant
information, and one would not be able to use (preserve) all
the collected information. The preservation of this type of
totaling property has been one of the main aims in developing
the heavy OWA operators [13]. This makes the use of fuzzy
heavy OWA [7] clearly applicable and justifiable together
with fuzzy scorecards, since FHOWA is designed to be
applied as a totaling type of operator for problems that cannot
utilize averaging type of operators like fuzzy OWA. By
applying FHOWA with fuzzy scorecards distinct, non-
redundant information can be provided and all the collected
information can be used.

D. Fuzzy similarity measure

For measurement of similarity between two fuzzy triangular
numbers quite new method introduced in [14] is used. The
method is simplified to be used with triangular fuzzy numbers
in the following:

Definition 4. Let A=(a
1
,a
2
,a
3
) and B=(b
1
,b
2
,b
3
) be fuzzy
triangular numbers and U be the set of fuzzy numbers. A
similarity operator S is a mapping S: U U[0,1]. Similarity
function S is defined as

( )
( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ) ( ), ( max ) ( ), ( max
) ( ), ( min ) ( ), ( min
|) | 1 ( ) , (
B A A A B P A P
B A A A B P A P
Xb Xa B A S
+
+
=
(8)
where perimeters are

( ) ( ) ) ( 1 1 ) (
1 3
2
3 2
2
2 1
a a a a a a A P + + + + =
( ) ( ) ) ( 1 1 ) (
1 3
2
3 2
2
2 1
b b b b b b B P + + + + =

and areas are
( )
1 3
2
1
) ( a a A A =

( )
1 3
2
1
) ( b b B A =

and center-of-gravity points are

40
2
) 1 )( ( 2
,
2
) 1 )( ( 2
1 3 2 1 3 2
Yb b b b Yb
Xb
Ya a a a Ya
Xa
+ +
=
+ +
=

III. THE PROPOSED FUZZY MEMCDM SYSTEM FOR
RANKING

The following general situation is considered, where a finite
set of alternatives { } m i A A
i
, , 1 | = =

needs to be
evaluated by a committee of three decision-makers
, by considering a finite set of given criteria

. A decision matrix representation of

performance rating of each alternative A
i
is considered with
respect to each criterion C
j
as follows:

(9)

where m rows represent m possible candidates, n columns
represents n relevant criteria and x
ij
represents the performance
rating of the i-th alternative with respect to j-th criterion C
j
.
These ratings are obtained by using fuzzy score cards and are
triangular fuzzy numbers. Triangular fuzzy numbers R=(a,b,c)
are formed from decision makers crisp numbers. This way
fuzzy ratings x
ij
of alternatives with respect to each criterion
are now
, where
.

The next step for the decision matrix is to form a linear scale
transformation to transform the various criteria scales into
comparable scales. The criteria set can be divided into a
benefit criteria (larger the rating, the greater the preference)
and into a cost criteria (the smaller the rating, the greater the
preference). The normalized fuzzy decision matrix can be
represented as

(10)
where B and C are the sets of benefit criteria and cost criteria,
respectively, and

where
max
and
min
.

This normalized decision matrix is aggregated with regards to
the criteria by using FHOWA:

_
=
= =
n
j
j j in i i i
b w r r r FHOWA R
1
2 1
) , , , (
(11)
where b
j
is the j-th largest of the vector ( )
in i i
r r r , , ,
2 1
,
| | 1 , 0 e
j
w and
| | n w
n
j
j
, 1
1
e
_
=
. Required ordering is done by
using the ordering method given by Kaufman and Gupta in
[10] and shortly presented in the previous subsection. Also the
selection of the used weighting scheme must be made.

The result is that an aggregated triangular fuzzy number is
available for each alternative; the next step is to order these by
using a new method of comparison to reference ideal
solution. The aggregated fuzzy numbers of each alternative
and the ideal solution are mapped to a scale between [0,1],
and the similarity value between the ideal solution and each
alternative is calculated, by applying formula (6) as

( )
( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ) ( ), ( max ) ( ), ( max
) ( ), ( min ) ( ), ( min
|) | 1 ( ) , (
+ +
+ +
+ +
+
+
=
A A A A A P A P
A A A A A P A P
Xa Xa A A S
i i
i i
i i i
(12)

The (preference) ordering of the alternatives is found by
ranking them from highest degree of similarity to the lowest.
IV. NUMERICAL EXAMPLE

Suppose that an international company desires to acquire a
firm from abroad. After a preliminary screening six target
companies A
1
,A
2,,
A
6
remain for further evaluation. Five
benefit criteria are considered for each target, according to the
experience of the company management:

1) Target market share (C
1
)
2) Target operating margin (C
2
)
3) Target technology level (C
3
)
4) Quality of key personnel (C
4
)
5) Share of relevant core business of whole (C
5
)

The proposed method is applied to solve the problem and
computational procedure is summarized as follows:

Step 1: Multiple (in this case three) decision makers use a
scorecard to evaluate the target companies with respect to all
five criteria.

Step 2: A fuzzy scorecard is formed from the evaluations. The
fuzzy ratings for all criteria are presented in Table 3

Table 3: Target ratings; summary for all criteria.
C
1
C
2
C
3
C
4
C
5

A
1
(4,5,7) (5,6,7) (9,9,10) (8,9,9) (7,8,9)
A
2
(8,9,9) (7,8,10) (9,10,10) (7,8,8) (5,6,10)
A
3
(8,8,10) (9,9,10) (7,7,10) (6,6,9) (8,10,10)
41
A
4
(6,7,8) (7,8,9) (7,9,10) (6,9,10) (9,10,10)
A
5
(6,8,9) (8,9,10) (9,10,10) (8,9,9) (7,8,10)
A
6
(7,9,10) (6,7,8) (6,7,7) (9,9,10) (8,8,10)
A
7
(5,6,8) (6,7,8) (6,7,7) (8,9,9) (8,9,10)

Step 3: A normalized fuzzy decision matrix is constructed, see
Table 4.
Table 4: Normalized fuzzy decision matrix.
C1 C2 C3 C4 C5
A1 (0.4,0.5,0.7) (0.5,0.6, 0.7) (0.9, 0.9, 1) (0.8, 0.9,0.9) (0.7, 0.8,0.9)
A2 (0.8, 0.9,0.9) (0.7, 0.8,1) (0.9,1,1) (0.7, 0.8,0.8) (0.5, 0.6,1)
A3 (0.8,0.8,1) (0.9,0.9,1) (0.7,0.7,1) (0.6, 0.6,0.9) (0.8,1,1)
A
4
(0.6, 0.7,0.8) (0.7, 0.8,0.9) (0.7, 0.9,1) (0.6, 0.9,1) (0.9,1,1)
A
5
(0.6, 0.8,0.9) (0.8, 0.9,1) (0.9,1,1) (0.8, 0.9,0.9) (0.7, 0.8,1)
A
6
(0.7,0.9,1) (0.6,0.7,0.8) (0.6, 0.7,0.7) (0.9, 0.9,1) (0.8, 0.8,1)
A7 (0.5,0.6,0.8) (0.6,0.7,0.8) (0.6, 0.7,0.7) (0.8,0.9,0.9) (0.8,0.9,1)

Step 3: The decision matrix is aggregated using FHOWA over
all criteria, with the pre-chosen weighting vector, see Table 5.
In this example the weighting vector is
; when this type of a weighting vector is
used, a target needs to get a very high score from one criterion,
needs to perform well on three criteria, and the fifth criterion
can be improved after selection. One needs to remember that
the worst targets were eliminated in the pre-screening phase.
The weighting vector can be selected according to the
aggregation requirements. The resulting aggregated values are
visible in Table 5.

Table 5: Aggregated values for the targets by using FHOWA
Candidate FHOWA(C
1
,C
2
,C
3
,C
4
,C
5
)
A
1
(2.34,2.56,2.82)
A
2
(2.49,2.81,2.99)
A
3
(2.54,2.74,3.19)
A
4
(2.36,2.89,3.11)
A
5
(2.57,2.90,3.12)
A
6
(2.43,2.65,3.03)
A
7
(2.25,2.57,2.76)

Step 5: The aggregated fuzzy numbers are scaled to the
interval [0,1] (normalized) , as in Table 6.

Table 6: Normalized fuzzy numbers for the targets.
Candidate FHOWA(C
1
,C
2
,C
3
,C
4
,C
5
)
A
1
(0.73,0.80,0.88)
A
2
(0.78,0.88,0.93)
A
3
(0.80,0.86,1)
A
4
(0.74,0.91,0.98)
A
5
(0.81,0.91,0.98)
A
6
(0.76,0.83,0.95)
A
7
(0.71,0.81,0.87)

Step 6: Creation of a (fuzzy) ideal target and the calculation
of similarity of all fuzzy numbers in Table 6 to the ideal
solution. In this case the normalized ideal solution is:
) 1 , 1 , 9 . 0 ( =
+
A and similarity of the targets to the ideal
solution is given in Table 7.
Table 7: Similarity of the targets to the ideal target
Candidate S(A
i
,A
+
) Order
A
1
0.81 6
A
2
0.86 2
A
3
0.85 3
A
4
0.825 5
A
5
0.89 1
A
6
0.828 4
A7 0.79 7

This way it can be concluded that the best acquisition target
would be target number five with 0.89 similarity to the ideal
target.
V. CONCLUSIONS
This paper has presented a new multi-expert multi-criteria
decision-support method that is based on crisp scorecards used
by multiple (three), the use of fuzzy heavy OWA, and using a
new approach based on fuzzy similarity for ranking.

The benefits of the method include the use of multiple experts
to obtain multiple points-of-view for considering imprecision
and uncertainty that are used for the creation of a triangular
fuzzy result for each criterion. The fuzzy numbers created by
integrating the opinions of multiple experts work as a
consensus of the opinions of the experts. By using the
resulting fuzzy scorecard we are, in fact, providing distinct,
non-redundant information, and we are able to preserve all the
collected information.

The fuzzy scorecard total score is aggregated with the fuzzy
heavy OWA operator for the purpose of including the
desirable ordering property. Furthermore the fuzzy heavy
OWA is used, instead of fuzzy OWA, because fuzzy heavy
OWA is a totaling type of operator that is able to preserve
properties of fuzzy scorecards, which would be lost if a simple
averaging operator like fuzzy OWA was used.

Last step in the approach is the ranking by comparison of the
fuzzy alternatives to an ideal solution (alternative).
Comparison of fuzzy numbers to an ideal solution is not a
trivial task. In the comparison a new fuzzy similarity measure
is chosen for the job: it able to include several different types
of information carried by the fuzzy number. These include the
center of gravity, the perimeter of fuzzy numbers, and the area
of fuzzy numbers all properties that carry information about
the alternatives that would be lost if a simple distance measure
was used in the ranking.

The proposed method is usable in many instances of decision-
making that are done under uncertainty and imprecision, that
require the ordering property of OWA operators, but that also
require the use of a weighting vector that can reflect a
selection policy, and that benefit from the use of a totaling
rather than an averaging operation.

42
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[11] H. B. Mitchell and D. D. Estrach, "An OWA operator with
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measure of generalized fuzzy numbers" Procedia Engineering,
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43
AHP based decision support tool for the evaluation
of works of art - Registry of Artistic Performances
Jan Stoklasa
Dept. of Math Analysis and
Applications of Mathematics
Faculty of Science
Palacky University in Olomouc
17. listopadu 1192/12, 771 46 Olomouc
Email: jan.stoklasa@upol.cz
Jana Tala sov a
Dept. of Math Analysis and
Applications of Mathematics
Faculty of Science
Palacky University in Olomouc
17. listopadu 1192/12, 771 46 Olomouc
Email: jana.talasova@upol.cz
AbstractThe paper provides a description of the mathema-
tical model for the evaluation of creative work outcomes of Czech
Art Colleges. 27 categories of works of art are dened based on
3 criteria, that are partially dependent - relevance/signicance,
extent and institutional and media reception. The 27 cate-
gories are then ranked using the pair wise comparison method.
Subsequently Saatys AHP is used to determine a score for
each category. The proposed evaluation methodology combines
evaluation based on objective criteria with peer review and
suggests a possible way of solving the problem of arts evaluation
for funding purposes. The concept of weak consistency is used
in the model as a minimum requirement on consistency of the
expertly dened matrix of preference intensities. For pair wise
comparison matrices with ordered categories, the fulllment of
weak consistency can be checked during the data input phase.
This way the weak consistency of pair wise comparison matrices
can be achieved even for large numbers of categories - unlike the
full consistency in Saatys sense. The model is currently being
used for allocation of a part of the subsidy from the state budget
of the Czech Republic.
Keywordsevaluation, arts, quality assessment, MCDM, AHP,
consistency.
I. INTRODUCTION
Evaluation of works of arts is a difcult task. Individual
taste and preferences are an important part of the art assess-
ment process and as such the consensual evaluation in a group
of experts is not easy to obtain. However, particularly for the
purposes of funds distribution on national level, tools for the
assessment of performance in the area of artistic work need
to be available. Multiple criteria evaluation approach able to
combine (multi) expert assessment of the quality of the output
with more objective criteria proves to be justied for this
purpose (see the example of [1]). The paper aims to present
such a tool developed and currently used in the Czech Republic
[2], [3].
In section II we introduce the necessary mathematical
tools and concepts. Section III summarizes the basic ideas
of the Registry of Artistic Performances (RUV in Czech) -
the evaluation criteria and categories of works of arts used.
Basic principles of the methodology for evaluation of works
of arts in the Czech Republic is also presented here. In section
IV the mathematical model used to determine the scores of
each category of works of arts is described. The last section
provides discussion of the results and possible future directions
for further development of the model.
II. PRELIMINARIES
Let us consider n categories we need to evaluate. The
multiplicative Saatys matrix of preference intensities S can be
used to express the preferences of a group of experts among
pairs of categories. The square matrix S = {s
ij
}
i,j=1,...,n
is
required to be reciprocal, that is s
ij
= 1/s
ji
for all i, j =
1, 2, . . . , n. If experts input their intensities of preferences
between categories i and j, and if we assume that category i
is preferred to category j or of equal importance, the elements
s
ij
are chosen from the set {1, 2, . . . , 9}. Saaty (see [4], [5])
suggests linguistic descriptors to be used by the experts to
express their preferences (see Table I). The elements s
ij
of
TABLE I. SAATYS SCALE.
s
ij
linguistic meanings
1 category i is equally important as category j
3 category i is slightly/moderately more important than category j
5 category i is strongly more important than category j
7 category i is very strongly more important than category j
9 category i is extremely/absolutely more important than category j
2,4,6,8 correspond with the respective intermediate linguistic meanings
the matrix S are expertly dened estimations of the ratio
w
i
/w
j
, where w
i
is the evaluation of category i and w
j
is the
evaluation of category j. Finding the evaluations w
1
, . . . . , w
n
of the categories based on the information provided by experts
through the matrix S means nding the arguments of the
minimum of expression (1).
n
i=1
n
j=1
_
s
ij

w
i
w
j
_
2
(1)
The solution to this problem for all i = 1, . . . , n can be found
in the form of (2).
w
i
=
n
_
n
j=1
s
ij
(2)
Alternatively (see e.g. [6]) w
i
can be obtained as the i
th
component of the eigenvector of S corresponding to its largest
real eigenvalue
max
(also known as the spectral radius of S).
44
If s
ij
= w
i
/w
j
for all i, j = 1, . . . , n, the matrix S is fully
consistent in Saatys sense. The Saatys consistency condition
can be also formulated in the following way:
s
ik
= s
ij
s
jk,
for all i, j, k = 1, 2, . . . , n. (3)
It is well known that the condition (3) is usually not fullled
by expertly dened matrices of larger order (particularly when
linguistic descriptors from Table I are used in the input
process). Saaty therefore proposes an inconsistency index CI
based on the spectral radius of S by (4), where n is the order
of S (in our case the number of categories).
CI =

max
n
n 1
(4)
The matrix S is considered consistent enough in Saatys sense,
if condition (5) holds, where CR is the so called inconsistency
ratio and RI
n
is the random inconsistency index of a matrix
of intensities of preferences of order n (RI
n
is obtained as
an average of inconsistency indices for randomly generated
reciprocal multiplicative matrices of intensities of preferences
of the order n).
CR =
CI
RI
n
< 0.1 (5)
Other approaches to inconsistency measurement can be found
for example in [7], [8], [9] or [10], Brunelli et al. provide
a comparison of various inconsistency measures in [11]. The
threshold set in (5) at 0.1 is rather arbitrary, although it has
been successfully used in many real world applications.
An important deciency of many of the inconsistency
measures that can be found in the literature is, apart from
the arbitrary denition of acceptable consistency, the fact that
the actual inconsistency can be assessed only once the matrix
S is completed. However if we require the experts to input a
large matrix of preference intensities, the input process might
be too time consuming to be repeated in case the sufcient
consistency is not achieved. Various methods of dealing with
this issue can be found in the literature. Some involve ad-
justments of the nal matrix so that it becomes consistent
enough, proposals of methods of inputting incomplete matrix
S and computing evaluations from such matrix with missing
elements can also be found (see e.g. [12]). Hence we either
repeat the input process, require additional information, change
the obtained information or compute evaluations regardless of
the missing information.
If we need to obtain information from a group of experts
concerning their preferences on a large set of categories,
obtaining additional data for changes of the resulting matrix
S or inputting the whole matrix again may not be feasible
in real applications. It seems reasonable to dene a minimum
requirement on the consistency of preferences of the experts
that has to be met. The requirement should also be such
that can be checked during the input phase. Such minimum
consistency requirement was presented in [2], [3] as weak
consistency of the matrix S. According to [2] S is weakly
consistent, if for all i, j, k {1, . . . , n} the implications (6)
and (7) hold.
s
ij
> 1 s
jk
> 1 = s
ik
max{s
ij
, s
jk
} (6)
(s
ij
= 1 s
jk
1) (s
ij
1 s
jk
= 1) =
= s
ik
= max{s
ij
, s
jk
} (7)
The property s
ik
max{s
ij
, s
jk
} is referred to as max-max
transitivity in the literature [10]. It is easy to prove (see e.g.
[2]) that a consistent matrix S (in the Saatys sense according
to (3)) is also weakly consistent. Weak consistency dened
by (6) and (7) is a natural and reasonable requirement on the
consistency of expert preferences. If we order the categories
according to their importance before we start inputting the
matrix S, the weak consistency requirement can be checked
in each step of the data input phase directly by the experts,
as it translates into two simple conditions - the elements of S
need to be nondecreasing in each row from left to right and
nonincreasing from the top downwards in each column. This
allows us to obtain a weakly consistent matrix at the end of the
input process and no additional modications to the matrix are
necessary for this minimum consistency condition to be met.
The quasi-ordering of categories (a transitive and com-
plete relation) can be obtained by the pairwise comparison
method. The matrix of preferences and indifferences P =
{p
ij
}
i,j=1,...,n
, where p
ij
= 1 iff category i is more important
than category j, p
ij
= 0.5 iff categories i and j are of equal
importance and p
ij
= 0 iff category j is more important that
category i is constructed. For all i, j = 1, ..., n it holds that
p
ii
= 0.5 and p
ij
= 1 p
ji
. The row sums R
i
=
n
j=1
p
ij
,
i = 1, . . . , n can be used to determine the quasi-ordering of
the categories according to their importance (the largest R
i
corresponds with the most important category).
III. EVALUATION OF WORKS OF ARTS IN THE CZECH
REPUBLIC
The idea of the Registry of Artistic Performances is to store
information concerning the works of art created by workers
(teachers) of Czech Art Colleges and Faculties, classify them
into categories according to the previously stated criteria and
assign scores to the categories. The sum of these scores
for each Art College of Faculty is used as a measure of
performance of these institutions and it is used as a basis for
allocating a part of the subsidy from the state budget of the
Czech Republic among them. RUV is already being used for
this purpose in the Czech Republic, larger involvement of RUV
in the funds distribution among Artistic Colleges and Faculties
is the next natural step, as well as including also single artistic
study programmes on nonartistic faculties.
For the purposes of evaluation, the art sector in the Czech
Republic is divided into 7 segments - architecture, design,
lm, ne arts, literature, music and theatre. The works of
art are evaluated according to three criteria regardless of their
segment of origin. In each criterion, three different levels are
distinguished (denoted by capital letters that are then used for
the description of categories):
Relevance or signicance of the piece
A - a new piece of art or a performance of crucial
signicance;
B - a new piece of art or a performance containing
numerous important innovations;
C - a new piece of art or a performance pushing forward
modern trends.
This criterion is assessed expertly in a peer review process
that will be described further in the text and plays the role of
45
a quality assessment criterion in the model. Each segment of
art provided real-life (historical) examples for levels A, B and
C and also the general linguistic specications are customized
for each segment and made available to the expert evaluators.
Extent of the piece
K - a piece of art or a performance of large extent;
L - a piece of art or a performance of medium extent;
M - a piece of art or a performance of limited extent.
The levels of this criterion are again specied linguistically,
by examples or by measurable for each segment on such a level
of accuracy that most of the ambiguity in categorizing works
of art according to this criterion is removed. This can be seen
as reecting the amount of work needed to produce the piece,
the costs associated with it, number of people involved in the
creation of the piece and so on. Respective units can be used
to determine the levels of this criterion quantitatively.
Institutional and media reception/impact of the piece
X - international reception/impact;
Y - national reception/impact;
Z - regional reception/impact.
For this criterion lists of institutions corresponding to level
X, Y and Z are provided by each segment.
Based on the levels of the three criteria 27 categories of
works of art are dened. Each category is characterized by
a triplet of letters (one for each criterion reecting the level
of the respective criterion) e.g. AKX, BLX, or CMZ. Each
of these 27 categories is assigned a score (the mathematical
model used to determine cores is described in section IV). For
the purposes of the development of the mathematical model,
each segment provided a list of typical works of art for each
of the 27 categories. These real life examples can also be used
in the peer review process by the reviewers.
In the rst step the evaluation procedure involves the
assessment of each work of art by its creator and his/her
university or faculty. By self assessment the author proposes
the initial classication of the respective work of art - assigning
an initial triplet of letters. The proposed category has to be
approved by the faculty of College the creator is employed at.
In the second step, this evaluation is assessed by the council
of the respective segment of art and either conrmation of
this evaluation is issued or a second evaluation (second triplet
representing the opinion of the council) is assigned. This
information (either one conrmed classication of the piece
of art, or two conicting classications) is then provided to
independent reviewers in a way so that each piece of art is
assessed by at least two such reviewers. The nal evaluation
is determined as a majority opinion of all the parties (that is as
a majority based consensus on the levels of the three criteria).
In indecisive cases the external (independent) evaluation is
favoured.
IV. PROPOSED MATHEMATICAL MODEL
It is quite obvious that the three criteria used for the
evaluation are not independent. In this case the classical
approach proposed by Saaty in his AHP - that is to determine
Fig. 1. Ordering of the categories, scores assigned by the Eigenvector method
and by the Geometrical means method (2).
the weights of each criterion and the weights of each level
within each criterion and based on these to calculate the
evaluation of the categories - is not appropriate. In this case it
is better to expertly compare the 27 categories using the pair
wise comparison matrix. Saatys recommendation is to split
large problems (we have now a 27x27 matrix) into several
problems of lower dimension. To do so would, however, in this
case require the experts to express their preferences concerning
really vaguely dened supercategories of works of art. This
is obviously a problem, as the experts are unable to provide
relevant information of this kind.
We have therefore based the mathematical model for deter-
mining scores of the 27 categories on a matrix of intensities of
preferences of the order 27. The resulting matrix was required
to be weakly consistent. To achieve this, the rst step was to
determine the quasi-ordering of the 27 categories using the pair
wise comparison method. The resulting ordering in presented
in the rst column in Fig. 1.
In the second step the experts from various segments of art
were asked to input the matrix of intensities of preferences.
Having the categories ordered according to their importance
resulting form the rst step, the experts were instructed to pro-
vide their preferences and not to violate the weak consistency.
This way a weakly consistent matrix of preference intensities
was obtained (see Fig. 2), in this case CR = 0.1996. The
scores of the categories were computed using the Eigenvector
method and the Geometrical means method (2). The results
are presented in Fig. 1.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper we have presented the mathematical model
underlying the Registry of Artistic Performances used to deter-
mine the scores for 27 categories of works of art. The model is
46
Fig. 2. Saatys matrix of preference intensities as provided by the experts from various segments of arts. Consensus through all segments was required.
based on Saatys AHP. The notion of weak consistency was in-
troduced as a minimumrequirement on the consistency on such
a large matrix. By ordering the categories according to their
importance prior to asking the experts to input their intensities
of preferences, the weak consistency condition fulllment can
be checked in each step. After obtaining the weakly consistent
matrix of preference intensities, scores of categories were
computed using the Eigenvector and the Geometrical means
method. The results of these two methods are similar.
The evaluation methodology presented in this paper not
only deals with the difcult task of evaluation of works of
art, it also provides a means for integrating the peer review
component into the process of evaluation and combining it with
classical evaluation criteria. RUV is currently being used in the
Czech Republic for the distribution of a part of the subsidy
from the state budget among Art Colleges and Faculties, next
year it should open to all universities that, even partially,
provide education in the eld of arts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported by the Centralized Develop-
mental Projects C41 (2011) and C1 (2012) entitled Evaluating
Creative Work Outcomes to determine VKM and B3 Indexes
for Art Colleges and Faculties - A Pilot Project and nanced
by the Czech Ministry of Education.
REFERENCES
[1] Smernica c. 13/2008-R zo 16. okt obra 2008 o bibliograckej registr acii
a kategoriz acii publika cnej cinnosti, um eleckej cinnosti a ohlasov. Min-
isterstvo skolstva Slovenskej Republiky.
[2] J. Stoklasa, V. Jandov a, J. Tala sov a, Weak consistency in Saatys AHP
- evaluating creative work outcomes of Czech Art Colleges, Neural
network world, 23, 2013, pp. 61 - 77.
[3] J. Tala sov a, J. Stoklasa, A model for evaluating creative work outcomes
at Czech Art Colleges, Proceedings of the 29
th
International Conference
on Mathematical Methods in Economics 2011 - part II, 2011, Praha,
Czech Republic, Praha, 2011, pp. 698-703.
Fig. 3. Comparison of the resulting scores of categories using the Eigenvector
method and the Geometrical means method.
[4] Saaty, T. L., Vargas, L. G.: Decision Making with the Analytic Network
Process: Economic, Political, Social and Technological Applications with
Benets, Opportunities, Costs and Risks. Springer, New York, 2006.
[5] Saaty, T.L.: The Fundamentals of Decision Making and Priority Theory
with the Analytic Hierarchy Process. Vol. VI of the AHP Series, 478 pp.,
RWS Publ., 2000.
[6] Saaty, T.L.: Relative Measurement and Its Generalization in Decision
Making, Why Pairwise Comparisons are Central in Mathematics for the
Measurement of Intangible Factors - The Analytic Hierarchy/Network
Process, RACSAM, Vol. 102, No. 2, 2008, pp. 251 - 318.
[7] Alonso, J.A., Lamata, M.T.: Consistency in the Analytic Hierarchy Pro-
cess: A New Approach, International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness
and Knowledge-Based Systems, Vol 14., No. 4, 2006, pp. 445-459.
[8] Lamata, M.T., Pelaez, J.I.: A Method for Improving the Consis-
tency Judgemets, International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and
Knowledge-Based Systems, Vol 10, No. 6, 2002, pp. 677686.
[9] Ji, P., Jiang, R.: Scale Transitivity in the AHP, The Journal of the
Operational Research Society, Vol. 54, No. 8, 2003, pp. 896-905.
[10] Herrera-Viedma, E., Herrera, F., Chiclana, F., Luque, M.: Some issues
on consistency of fuzzy preference relations, European Journal of
Operational Research, 154, 2004, 98-109.
[11] Brunelli, M., Canal, L., Fedrizzi, M.: Inconsistency indices for pairwise
comparison matrices: a numerical study. Annals of Operations Research,
2011.
[12] Fedrizzi, M., Giove, S.: Optimal sequencing in incomplete pairwise
comparisons for large-dimensional problems, International Journal of
General Systems, Vol. 42, No. 4, 2013, 366-375.
47
Multiple objectives and system constraints in
double-deck elevator dispatching
Janne Sorsa, Mirko Ruokokoski
KONE Corporation
FI-02150 Espoo, Finland
Email: Janne.Sorsa@kone.com, Mirko.Ruokokoski@kone.com
AbstractThe elevator group control dispatches elevators to
serve passenger calls. The dispatching decisions are determined
by solving the Elevator Dispatching Problem (EDP). Passengers
enter their destination calls with the destination control already in
the lobby. In turn, the group control assigns the serving elevator
immediately and announces it to the passenger. A double-deck
elevator consists of two elevator cars that are attached on top
of each other thus serving two adjacent oors simultaneously.
In the existing double-deck destination controls, both the serving
elevator and deck are xed at once after the passenger call and not
changed afterwards. In this paper, the effect of these restrictions
on the solutions of the double-deck elevator dispatching problem
are studied by depicting its objective space with two conicting
objectives, namely, passenger waiting and transit time. This paper
aims at characterizing the relationship between passenger waiting
time in the lobby and transit time inside the car as optimization
objectives.
I. INTRODUCTION
The main task of an elevator group control is to dispatch
the elevators under its control to passenger calls. The group
control optimizes dispatching decisions by solving the Elevator
Dispatching Problem (EDP). Nowadays all major elevator
companies offer an advanced elevator product, Destination
Control (DC), in which passengers enter their destination calls
already in the lobby using a numeric keypad. After registering
the call, the group control immediately assigns the elevator
to serve the call and announces it on the screen associated
with the keypad. All the existing DC products are designed
according to this principle.
A double-deck elevator is a special elevator consisting of
two elevator cars. The cars are attached one on top of the
other and move as a single unit, thus serving adjacent oors at
the same time. To allow simultaneous service of the decks on
the ground oor, the lobby is arranged on two oors which are
interconnected by escalators [1]. In this arrangement, the lower
deck serves only the lower lobby level, while the upper deck
serves only the upper lobby level. However, both decks can
serve all the upper oors, the topmost oor being a possible
exception to the rule if the building does not have adequate
space above it for the upper deck.
Modern double-deck group controls can minimize passen-
ger waiting and journey times as optimization objectives of the
Double-Deck Elevator Dispatching Problem (DD-EDP) [2][3].
However, these objectives result in different solutions even in
simple situations, which raises the foreseeability of conicting
objectives. Therefore, the DD-EDP is put here in the context
of multi-objective optimization, where passenger waiting and
transit times are considered simultaneously. Transit time is
considered as the second objective instead of journey time
because journey time is about the same as waiting plus transit
time [4]. Multi-objective optimization has not been considered
earlier for different passenger service objectives, but balancing
of passenger service and energy consumption has been realized
[5][6].
The existing double-deck DC assigns both the serving
elevator and deck immediately after the passenger call is
registered [3]. Recently, a new approach to DC has been
proposed, which postpones the nal elevator assignment to a
later time. The nal moment for xing the assignment can be,
for example, when the elevator starts to decelerate to the call
oor. Such a product would require a different user interface
and signalization concept compared to existing products. The
delayed assignment does not affect the structure of the DD-
EDP but only the complexity of the actual problem instances.
In this paper, objective spaces of small and moderately large
DD-EDP instances are studied by relaxing the system con-
straints gradually. The cases under consideration are:
1) the existing DC, which considers all the existing calls
as constraints and makes the immediate assignment
of both the elevator and the deck only once for a
newly registered call;
2) Semi-Continuous (SC) DC, which makes the nal
elevator shaft assignment immediately but allows the
change of the serving deck until a dened distance
from the call oor;
3) Fully-Continuous (FC) DC, which allows the change
of both the serving elevator and the deck until a
dened distance from the call oor.
In the above terms, continuous refers to the gradual
change of the DC, which traditionally operates according
to the immediate assignment policy, towards the continuous
assignment policy, which is typical of the conventional control
with up and down call buttons as call-giving devices. Since
DC is generally less efcient in mixed lunch-hour trafc than
in morning up-peak [7], the delayed elevator assignment is
expected to reduce passenger service times during that time.
Therefore, the example instances in this paper are taken from
lunch-hour trafc simulations conducted with the Building
Trafc Simulator (KONE BTS
TM
) [8]. The instances are solved
in an off-line environment with the genetic algorithm [9]
adapted to double-deck elevators [2][3].
48
II. DD-EDP OBJECTIVE FUNCTIONS
The DD-EDP can be decomposed into a generalized assign-
ment problem and a set of elevator routing problems following
the well-known decomposition of the vehicle routing problem.
In the case of the DD-EDP, a deck of an elevator corresponds to
a vehicle and the main decision variables are deck to passenger
call assignments. The set S consists of all the origin oors of
the destination calls requiring pick-up, and the set T contains
all the destination oors of the passengers travelling inside the
elevators as well as the passengers still waiting for pick-up.
The waiting time of a passenger i S is simply the sum
of the estimated arrival time of an elevator, t
i
, and the time
elapsed since the registration of the call,
i
. The transit time of
a passenger i T is then the difference between the elevator
arrival times to the destination and the origin oor.
Each call is also associated with the number of passengers
requiring service,
i
, which is assumed to equal one in this
paper. However, in the real DC, passengers can give a group
call in which they dene the number of travelling passengers.
The number of passengers can also be estimated from trafc
statistics collected by the group control [10].
The objective functions of the DD-EDP are f
1
to minimize
passenger waiting time and f
2
to minimize passenger transit
time,
f
1
(S, T) =
iS
(
i
+t
i
)
i
, (1)
f
2
(S, T) =
iT
(t
i
t
j
)
i
, (2)
where j S is the known origin oor of the destination call
and i T is the destination oor of the destination call. For
passengers already travelling inside the car, t
j
is the actual
time of pick-up as recorded by the group control.
III. ANALYSIS OF TWO DD-EDP INSTANCES
Two instances of the DD-EDP are analyzed to describe its
characteristics as a multi-objective optimization problem. To
get a realistic initial state and calls for the instances, an elevator
group consisting of ve double-deck elevators was simulated
with the BTS for a building with 19 oors including a two-oor
lobby on the ground oor. The initial states of the instances
occurred during lunch-hour trafc simulations, in which the
passenger arrival rates were 6% and 12% of the building
population in ve minutes, or 95 and 190 persons in absolute
terms. The simulated trafc was split to incoming, outgoing,
and inter-oor trafc components with proportions 40%, 40%
and 20%, respectively. During the simulations, the locations,
loads and other state variables of the elevators as well as the
passenger calls were recorded into log-les for all solved DD-
EDP instances. A single instance from both simulations was
chosen to represent a small instance and a moderately large
instance. The small instance included 10 passenger calls and
the larger one 30 passenger calls.
A. Off-line Environment to Solve the Instances
A custom-built software was used to read the initial state
and calls of an instance from the log-les. It then modied
the DD-EDP system constraints and solved the problem off-
line by the same genetic algorithm as used in the actual
TABLE I. TOTAL NUMBER OF ALTERNATIVE AND EVALUATED
CHROMOSOMES
Instance with 10 passengers Instance with 30 passengers
Alternatives Evaluated Alternatives Evaluated
DC 10 10 10 10
SC 320 297 1.31 10
6
7802
FC 6.25 10
8
33072 2.44 10
26
42737
elevator product [9][2][3]. However, in this off-line study, the
number of chromosomes were increased to 400 and the same
value was used for the maximum number of generations. With
these parameters, the genetic algorithm produces many more
iterations and unique chromosomes than the actual real-time
algorithm which gives a better idea of the whole objective
space.
The used genetic algorithm optimizes only a single ob-
jective. However, it was originally developed to be capable of
evaluating two or more objective functions and then calculating
the nal tness as a weighted sum over the objective function
values. Thus, the DD-EDP can be formulated as a scalarized
multi-objective optimization problem with weight factor w,
min wf
1
(S, T) + (1 w) f
2
(S, T) . (3)
For this study, the individual objective function values were
stored to analyze the objective space afterwards. It turned out
that the weighing had a strong inuence on the areas where
the genetic algorithm solutions converged. Therefore, instances
with a large number of possible solutions, namely, the ones
with both SC and FC, were solved several times with different
weight factors, w 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1.
B. DD-EDP Complexity
The complexity of the DD-EDP varies a lot depending on
the system constraints. Theoretically, the total number of solu-
tion alternatives equals (2E)
C
where E denotes the number of
elevators, C the number of calls subject to optimization, and
2 stands for the two decks of the elevator. However, in the
case of DC, usually C = 1, but in the case of FC, C equals
the total number of non-served passenger calls. The case of
SC differs slightly from the others since it contains usually
only one new call which can be served by all elevators and
C1 earlier calls for which the serving deck can be changed.
Therefore, the number of solutions for SC equals 2E 2
C1
.
Table I shows how quickly the number of alternative solutions
increases depending on the number of passenger calls and the
system constraints.
The maximum number of calls at any given time is
restricted by elevator capacity since the DC is capable of
planning elevator routes for 1.5 roundtrips ahead of their
current location. Let denote the maximum number of calls
that can be assigned to one deck at a time. Then, group
control can assign up to 2 calls for a single elevator during
one trip upwards or downwards. By combining these for the
whole group, the maximum number of calls is estimated at
C
max
= 6E. For the elevator group used in these examples
C
max
equals 420 if 14 passenger calls is the momentary
maximum along the elevator routes.
49
DD-EDP Objective Space for 10 Passengers
20
25
30
35
40
45
20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70
Average Waiting Time (s)
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

T
r
a
n
s
i
t

T
i
m
e

(
s
)
FC
SC
DC
Fig. 1. DD-EDP solutions in the objective space
DD-EDP Objective Space for 30 Passengers
60
65
70
75
80
85
40 60 80 100 120
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

T
r
a
n
s
i
t

T
i
m
e

(
s
)
FC
SC
DC
Fig. 2. DD-EDP solutions in the objective space
C. DD-EDP Objective Space
Figures 1 and 2 show the evaluated solutions of the small
and the large instance, and for DC, SC and FC, respectively. In
the gures, each data-point corresponds to one solution to the
problem instance and it depicts average passenger transit time
as a function of average passenger waiting time. The solutions
for SC and FC clearly exhibit a typical form for conicting
objectives since the shape of the Pareto-optimal front is visible.
Since DC has only a few alternative solutions, the relationship
is not well visible but seems similar to the others.
Figures 3 and 4 show the respective Pareto-optimal fronts
for the small and the large problem. The Pareto front of the
large instance seems to be non-continuous at some specic
areas of the objective space for FC. The gaps result from the
chosen weight factors that make the search to converge on the
areas close to the gaps but not reaching them. The DC has only
three Pareto-optimal solutions to the small instance and two for
the large. This occurs probably because of the many constraints
posed by the existing passengers on the service of the new one.
The Pareto-optimal solutions of SC are slightly better than
the solutions of the DC as there are additional possibilities to
change the serving deck. According to the gures, FC promises
a clearly better service level compared to DC and SC: the
freedom of choice improves the minimum waiting and transit
times up to 15%. However, the improvement only reects the
estimation inside the group control and its optimization model.
The result can only be interpreted as an indication, and not as
an actual improvement in passenger service level.
DD-EDP Pareto-optimal Solutions for 10 Passengers
20
25
30
35
20 25 30 35
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

T
r
a
n
s
i
t

T
i
m
e

(
s
)
FC
SC
DC
Fig. 3. DD-EDP Pareto-optimal solutions for 10 passengers
DD-EDP Pareto-optimal Solutions for 30 Passengers
60
65
70
75
45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

T
r
a
n
s
i
t

T
i
m
e

(
s
)
FC
SC
DC
Fig. 4. DD-EDP Pareto-optimal solutions for 30 passengers
TABLE II. PROPORTION OF EVALUATED SOLUTIONS INSIDE THE BOX
BOUNDED BY IDEAL AND NADIR VECTORS, 10 PASSENGERS
Ideal Nadir Inside the box
f
1
f
2
f
1
f
2
DC 23.16 28.98 24.72 31.91 30.0%
SC 23.16 28.26 25.88 31.91 12.8%
FC 20.25 24.04 31.93 34.09 19.0%
TABLE III. PROPORTION OF EVALUATED SOLUTIONS INSIDE THE BOX
BOUNDED BY IDEAL AND NADIR VECTORS, 30 PASSENGERS
Ideal Nadir Inside the box
f
1
f
2
f
1
f
2
DC 58.62 72.06 61.28 72.37 50.0%
SC 58.62 69.05 77.68 72.37 94.4%
FC 47.37 61.34 99.47 78.29 79.9%
D. DD-EDP Pareto-Optimal Region
The Pareto-optimal region is a box in the objective space
which is bounded by the ideal and the nadir objective vectors
[11]. The ideal objective vector denes the lower left corner
of the box as the minimum values of both of the objectives.
The nadir point lies in the opposite corner and can in practice
be dened by the values of the other than the minimum
component of the ideal vector. These special objective vectors
are shown in Tables II and III for the small and the large
instance, respectively. As can be expected, the volumes of the
Pareto-optimal regions are small for the DC, a bit wider for
the SC, and the largest for the FC.
The tables also show the percentage of the evaluated
solutions that lie in the Pareto-optimal region. In the case of
DC, the percentage is not statistically signicant because there
are only 10 solutions to the problem instances. In the case
50
of the small instance, the percentages are rather low due to
tight boundaries of the Pareto-optimal region. With the large
problem instance, the percentages are high but also the Pareto-
optimal regions are quite large, especially for the FC. The
genetic algorithm does unnecessary work when evaluating the
solutions outside the Pareto-optimal region. In addition, since
the volume of the Pareto-optimal region as well as the amount
of useless processing varies, the algorithm should be capable
of dynamically recognizing the iterations in the areas far from
the Pareto front and adapting its search direction accordingly.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the Double-Deck Elevator Dispatching Prob-
lem (DD-EDP) was described as a multi-objective optimization
problem. Generally, passenger waiting and transit times in the
elevator system are conicting objectives. Between these two
objectives, a rather typical Pareto-optimal front was found
by studying the solutions of two DD-EDP instances in the
objective space. It seems that the more solution alternatives
there are, the wider they spread in the objective space. In
addition, sometimes a large proportion of evaluated solutions
is inferior to the Pareto-optimal region. An on-line multi-
objective optimization algorithm could use additional heuris-
tics to avoid such bad solutions since time is always a critical
resource in a real-time control system.
The system constraints of the DD-EDP arise from the
Destination Control (DC), which traditionally makes the nal
decision of both the serving elevator and deck immediately
after the passenger call is registered. The semi-continuous
double-deck DC allows the group control to change the serving
deck after the initial assignment but the fully continuous DC
also allows the serving elevator to be changed. The fully
continuous DC also requires a new user interface concept.
Based on the Pareto-optimal solutions to the studied problem
instances, it seems that the FC could improve passenger
waiting and/or transit times by about 10-15%. However, this
estimation needs to be veried by proper simulations to get a
more reliable estimate.
Naturally, the question arises about what the group control
should optimize. The Pareto-optimal solutions showed a rather
wide range of values in both the average waiting and transit
times. The addition of energy consumption as the third objec-
tive would complicate the matter even further. Traditionally,
the preference order of the objectives has been the decision
makers dilemma in multi-criteria decision making. In an eleva-
tor group control, the decision making must be automatic and
adaptive since it is executed continuously. However, building
managers and even individual users could have a possibility
to state their preferences, which the group control could take
into account when making the dispatching decisions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Professor Kalyanmoy Deb
and Rick Barker, Principal of Barker Mohandas, USA, for
inspiring discussions about our common interests.
REFERENCES
[1] J. Fortune, Modern double-deck elevator applications and theory,
Elevator World, vol. 44, no. 8, pp. 6368, 1996.
[2] J. Sorsa, M.-L. Siikonen, and H. Ehtamo, Optimal control of double-
deck elevator group using genetic algorithm, International Transac-
tions in Operational Research, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 103114, 2003.
[3] J. Sorsa and M.-L. Siikonen, Double-deck destination control system,
Elevatori, vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 4257, 2008.
[4] G. Barney, Towards agreed trafc design denitions, Elevator World,
vol. 53, no. 2, p. 108, 2005.
[5] T. Tyni and J. Ylinen, Evolutionary bi-objective optimisation in the ele-
vator car routing problem, European Journal of Operational Research,
vol. 169, no. 3, pp. 960977, 2006.
[6] S. Kobori, M. Iwata, N. Suzuki, and S. Yamashita, Energy-saving
techniques of elevator group control system, in Elevator Technology
18, A. Lustig, Ed. IAEE, 2010, pp. 167176.
[7] J. Sorsa, H. Hakonen, and M.-L. Siikonen, Elevator selection with
destination control system, Elevator World, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 148
155, 2006.
[8] M.-L. Siikonen, T. Susi, and H. Hakonen, Passenger trafc ow
simulation in tall buildings, Elevator World, vol. 49, no. 8, pp. 117
123, 2001.
[9] T. Tyni and J. Ylinen, Genetic algorithms in elevator car routing
problem, in Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation
Conference (GECCO-2001). San Francisco, CA, USA: Morgan
Kaufman Publishers, 2001, pp. 14131422.
[10] M.-L. Siikonen, Planning and control models for elevators in high-
rise buildings, Ph.D. dissertation, Helsinki University of Technology,
Systems Analysis Laboratory, 1997.
[11] K. Deb, Multi-Objective Optimization using Evolutionary Algorithms.
Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2001.
51
Scheduling and Routing in
Home Health Care Service
Thi Viet Ly Nguyen and Roberto Montemanni
Dalle Molle Institute for Articial Intelligence (IDSIA - USI/SUPSI)
Galleria 2, 6928 Manno, Switzerland
Email: vietly, roberto@idsia.ch
AbstractIn this paper we address the home health care
services problem in terms of routing and scheduling. The aim
of the study is to determine a feasible working plan for nurses
in order to offer patients the best possible solution in terms of
quality of service and economy while satisfying the demands of
patients and nurses as well as the related constraints. Besides
giving a brief overview of related literature, we describe a
new extended version of the existing home health case service
problems and propose a mixed integer linear programming
formulation. Computational results conducted based on a set of
randomly generated home health case scenarios reveal that the
proposed model is exible and applicable in practice.
I. INTRODUCTION
One of the vital topics in modern societies is the improve-
ment of life expectancy. The improvement of the quality of
medical and paramedical care services taken place at the house
of patients can play an important factor in this context. Conse-
quently the problem has caught the attention of researchers and
organizations during the last decade and has been considered as
a home health care (HHC) service presenting a substitute to the
conventional hospitalization to meet the increasing demands of
patients who are discharged from hospital and the elderly who
are in need of support and medical treatment for keeping the
best possible clinical conditions, which is a vital aspect to
help them recover completely and quickly. In order to provide
the best HHC service for residents, the care providers are
facing a number of challenging issues, such as service labor-
intensiveness, growing operation costs, increasing demand for
satisfaction level of both patients and workforce associations,
and the regulations regarding working time. Therefore, in
attempt to satisfy all the desires of patients, nurses, and care
providers within a limit operation cost it is worth considering
all the operational decisions affecting the efciency of the
HHC service within a same optimization framework. Among
these decisions, assigning nurses to patients, scheduling the
treatments, and routing the tours of nurses are the most
important and challenging decisions.
These decisions have been addressed in some recent
publications under a variety of assumptions, constraints and
objective functions. For instance, some studies deal with the
scheduling horizon of one day [1], [2], while others consider
a longer scheduling horizon of up to one week [3], [4], [5].
The cost of overtime is taken into account in [4], [1] but
is ignored in [3], [5], [2]. Almost the publications assume
that all nurses have to begin and end their working day
at a central ofce, however, the multiple central ofces are
stated in [5]. Some problem-specic assumptions are also
considered to make the model of HHC service more realistic.
In particular, qualication requirements are often taken into
account ([3], [1], [5], [2]): each treatment (injections, taking
blood pressure, taking temperature, blood transfusion, different
types of medication, etc) requires an exact level of skill and
each nurse provides a certain skill level. These studies assume
a nurse can be able to perform a required treatment only if
that nurse has a skill which is at least equal to the required
skill, implicitly implying a clear ranking of the skills that is
certainly not obvious in practice. In order to overcome this
limitation, [4] assume that each nurse provides a set of skill
and a nurse can only work the requests which require the skills
are the same as her skills. In [3], [1] we can see unsatised
requests are allowed with and without considering a penalty
cost. However, in [4] all the unsatised requests are lled up
with a dummy nurse who is not restricted to any constraints.
Then, a penalty cost is added into the objective function.
A set of operation days of associated request is the im-
portant information to create the working plan for the nurses.
While some studies consider it as given information, [3] pro-
pose three policies to generate a set of possible combinations of
days, e.g., Monday-Friday or Wednesday-Tuesday-Thursday.
The possible combinations are called patterns and are used
to operate the patient requests. The impact on the quality of
the solutions of the policies used to generate these patterns is
discussed in [6]. Service breaks for nurses are nally taken
into account as a mandatory rule in [1], [2].
As stated in [4], the HHC service problem is NP-hard.
Various solving approaches have been used to solve HHC
service problems, including integer linear programming, which
is proposed in [3] with the objective is to balance the overall
nurse utilization, constraint programming and (meta)heuristics
that are introduced in [4], [5], [2] with some variants in the
objective function, including minimizing the travel distance of
nurses, minimizing the total operational cost, minimizing the
unscheduled requests, and remaining the personal relationship
between patient and nurse. According to [3], in the literature
metaheuristic approaches are usually proposed to solve HHC
problems rather than exact approaches, due to the intrinsic
complexity of the problem.
In this paper, we focus primarily on scheduling and routing
in the context of HHC services. The objective is to devise a
model able to provide, once solved, the treatment schedule and
the tours of nurses in such a way that a lowest possible oper-
ational cost is guaranteed together with a consistent personal
relationship between patient and nurse. In addition, in order
to obtain a solution that satises the reasonable requirements
52
in practice such as the necessity of starting service within
a given time window for certain treatments, we take both
soft and hard time window into account when designing the
model. A maximum allowed value of overtime L is considered
to meet the labor regulations regarding working time while
reducing as much as possible the number of unlled requests.
Moreover, another important fact of interest addressed in the
model is balancing the workload among the nurses. These
elements together represent the main novel contribution of the
present paper. The rest of the paper is organized as follows.
Section II outlines the HHC service problem investigated
in the paper, providing a comparison with previous works.
Section III presents an integer linear programming formulation
of the problem. Section IV presents some computational results
stating the obvious applicability and exibility of the proposed
model. Section V concludes the paper.
II. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
We consider an extended version of the existing HHC
service models. The model is dened on a complete directed
network containing a single central ofce called depot. Two
main elements of the HHC service are the patients and the
nurses. The patients are represented via a set of job J in which
a job j J is a medical treatment required by patient. Each
job j J is characterized by a soft time window [e
j
, l
j
]
and a hard time window violations [lbv
j
, ubv
j
] regarding the
starting time of the service at job j. Penalty costs c
ej
and
c
lj
are paid if the service starts before time e
j
or after time
l
j
, respectively. The service cannot however start before time
lbv
j
or after time ubv
j
. This modeling choice is designed to
provide a level of exibility which is desirable in practice:
certain treatments have necessarily to be done within a given
time windows, and preferably within a tighter time window.
The duration of the service performed at job j J is d
j
. In
additional, each job j J requires a certain skill level q
j
and
a set of operation days D
j
during the planning horizon which
is presented by a set of days D of a week. The traveling time
between jobs i and j J is nally t
ij
.
A set of nurses O, representing the nurses available in the
team. Each nurse n O has a set of skills Q
n
representing
activities for which she has received a training and is therefore
able to cover.
The availability and costs of nurses are modeled as follows.
If nurse n O is available on day d D then a
d
n
= 1,
otherwise a
d
n
= 0. The cost for each overtime unit C
o
is just
applied to the ofcial nurses. The contract working time of
the ofcial nurses for a planning horizon is WT
n
and T is
the maximum allowed working time for a day. The maximum
allowed value of overtime is L. Nurse n O can only work
on jobs j J that require the skills Q
n
.
The objective function of the problem can change from
Company to Company, based on the specic needs. We
therefore let the planner to decide among the following ones,
or a linear combination of them: minimizing the number of
unscheduled tasks (these tasks will have to be covered with
external nurse not covered by the present model); maximizing
the patient-nurse loyalty (patients prefer to be visited every
time by the same nurse, ideally); minimizing the total overtime
cost, the total cost of time window violation; minimizing the
total waiting time; balance the workload as evenly as possible
among the nurses.
III. A MIXED INTEGER LINEAR PROGRAMMING
FORMULATION
This section provides a mixed integer linear programming
model for the problem described in Section II. The following
variables are used by the model:
y
nj
: if nurse n is assigned to job j y
nj
= 1, otherwise
y
nj
= 0
x
nd
ij
: if job j is covered immediately after job i by nurse
n on day d x
nd
ij
= 1, otherwise x
nd
ij
= 0
s
dn
: the starting time of nurse n on day d
e
dn
: the ending time of nurse n on day d
st
dj
: the time at which service begins at job j on day d
o
n
: overtime cost paid for nurse n during the planning
horizon
twv
1
dj
: the total cost of time window violation occurring at
job j on day d when the service starts before time e
j
twv
2
dj
: the total cost of time window violation occurring at
job j on day d when the service starts after time l
j
f
j
: the number of unscheduled tasks of job j
z: denes the minimum value of the number of tasks
performed by each nurse for the whole planning horizon
w
n
: the total time that nurse n has to spend on waiting for
the whole planning horizon
loy
j
: the number of different nurses performing job j
during the planning horizon
Objective function
Our study aims to obtain a solution in which the patients
are offered the best possible achievable quality of service,
the utilization of nurses is achieved highest possible and
the workload is balance among the nurses within the low
operational cost. Therefore, the objective function (1) is a
combination of six aims weighted where the weights sum up
to 1, and have to be selected by the manager in charge of the
scheduling, based on the needs of the Company. These aims
are, namely, minimizing the number of unscheduled tasks, re-
maining a consistent patient-nurse loyalty, minimizing the total
of overtime cost, minimizing the total cost of time window
violation, minimizing the total waiting time, maximizing the
value of the minimum number of tasks for each nurse. Notice
that the last objective makes the workload evenly balanced
among the nurses.
Min
1
jJ,j=0
f
j
+
2
jJ,j=0
loy
j
+
3
nO
o
n
+
4
dD
jJ,j=0
_
twv
1
dj
+twv
2
dj
_
+
5
nO
w
n
6
z (1)
53
Subject to
loy
j

nO
y
nj
1 j J, j ,= 0 (2)
y
nj

dD
j
a
d
n
n O
j
= n O[q
n
= q
j
,
j J, j ,= 0 (3)
y
nj

dD
j
iJ,i=j
x
nd
ij
n O
j
= n O[q
n
= q
j
,
j J, j ,= 0 (4)
y
nj
= 0 n (O O
j
) , j J, j ,= 0 (5)
x
nd
ij
= 0 n O, d (D D
j
) ,
j J, j ,= 0, i J, i ,= j (6)
x
nd
ij
y
nj
a
d
n
i, j J, i ,= j, j ,= 0, n O, d D
j
(7)
f
j
= [D
j
[
dD
j
nO
iJ,i=j
x
nd
ij
j J, j ,= 0 (8)
o
n
C
o
_
dD
(e
dn
s
dn
) WT
n
_
n O (9)
twv
1
dj
c
ej
(e
j
st
dj
) j J, j ,= 0, d D
j
(10)
twv
2
dj
c
lj
(st
dj
l
j
) j J, j ,= 0, d D
j
(11)
dD
(e
dn
s
dn
) WT
n
L n O (12)
z
dD
jJ,j=0
iJ,i=j
x
nd
ij
n O (13)
w
n
=
dD
(e
dn
s
dn
)
dD
jJ
iJ,i=j
x
nd
ij
t
ij
dD
jJ,j=0
iJ,i=j
x
nd
ij
d
j
n O (14)
s
dn
+t
0j
M
_
1 x
nd
0j
_
st
dj
n O, d D
j
,
j J, j ,= 0 (15)
st
dj
+d
j
+t
j0
M
_
1 x
nd
j0
_
e
dn
n O, d D
j
,
j J, j ,= 0 (16)
st
di
+d
i
+t
ij
M
_
1 x
nd
ij
_
st
dj
d D, n O,
i, j J 0 , i ,= j (17)
e
dn
s
dn
T n O, d D (18)
jJ,j=0
iJ,i=j
x
nd
ij
d
j
+
jJ
iJ,i=j
x
nd
ij
t
ij
e
dn
s
dn
n O, d D (19)
nO
iJ,i=j
x
nd
ij
1 j J, j ,= 0, d D (20)
jJ,j=0
x
nd
0j
1 n O, d D (21)
jJ,j=0
x
nd
j0
=
jJ,j=0
x
nd
0j
n O, d D (22)
iJ,i=j
x
nd
ij
=
iJ,i=j
x
nd
ji
n O, d D
j
,
j J, j ,= 0 (23)
jJ,j=0
iJ,i=j
x
nd
ij
M
iJ,i=0
x
nd
0i
n O, d D (24)
s
dn
M

jJ,j=0
x
nd
0j
n O, d D (25)
e
dn
M

jJ,j=0
x
nd
0j
n O, d D (26)
lbv
j
st
dj
d D, j J, j ,= 0 (27)
st
dj
ubv
j
d D, j J, j ,= 0 (28)
y
nj
0, 1 n O, j J (29)
x
nd
ij
0, 1 n O, d D,
i, j J, i ,= j (30)
s
dn
, e
dn
0 n O, d D (31)
twv
1
dj
, twv
2
dj
, st
dj
0 d D, j J (32)
o
n
, w
n
0 n O (33)
f
j
, loy
j
0 j J (34)
z 0 (35)
The patient nurse loyalty is presented through the number
of different ofcial nurses performing job j during the planning
horizon with her high skill. As stated in constraints (2), the
loyalty worsens as the value of loy
j
increases. Constraints (3)
state that nurse n who provides the high skill as the same as
the skill required by job j can be assigned to job j only if that
nurse is available at least one day among the required operation
days of job j. Constraints (4) mean that nurse n cannot be
assigned to job j if that nurse never performs job j during the
planning horizon. Equations (5) state that nurse n who does not
have the high skill required by job j cannot be assigned to job
54
j. Equations (6) mean that ofcial nurse n will not perform
job j on day d which is not the operational day of job j.
Constraints (7) mean that ofcial nurse n can not perform job
j on day d if she is not available on day d or she has not been
assigned to job j even she provides the high skill as the same
as the skill required by job j. The number of unscheduled tasks
for each job j is given in Equations (8). Equations (9) denes
the upper bound of the amount of overtime cost paid for each
ofcial nurse n for the whole planning horizon and the upper
bounds of the total cost of time window violation occurring at
each job j when the service starts before time e
j
or after time
l
j
for each operational day are given in Equations (10) and
(11). The constraints (12) guarantee that the total overtime
of each nurse cannot exceed the maximum allowed value.
Constraints (13) guarantee the workload is balance among the
nurses by dening the lower bound of the number of tasks
for the whole planning horizon. The total waiting time for the
whole planning horizon of each nurse is given in Equations
(14). The feasibility of the starting time and the ending time
of nurse n on day d are assured in constraints (15) and (16).
Constraints (17) guarantee that the starting times of jobs are
feasible. Constraints (18) mean that for each nurse, the daily
workload does not exceed the maximum allowed working time
T. Constraints (19) assure that the tour is long enough so that
nurse n can nish up all the tasks on that tour. Equations (20)
guarantee that each job is visited exactly once on day d by only
one nurse if that job is performed on that day. Constraints (21)
and (22) allow the case that on day d nurse n does not need to
visit any patient even though that nurse is available on that day.
If nurse n performs at least one treatment on day d then she
has to start once and end once at the depot. Constraints (23)
mean that each nurse n has to leave the patient after visiting.
Constraints (24) state that if nurse n does not perform any
treatment on day d then that nurse will not visit any patient
on that day. If nurse n does not perform any treatment on day
d then her starting time and ending time on day d are both
equal zero as stated in constraints (25) and (26). The service
at job j must be started within its hard time window violation
is guarantee in constraints (27) and (28). Constraints (29)-(35)
state variables domains.
IV. COMPUTATIONAL RESULTS
In order to demonstrate the applicability for the practical
solution of the proposed model as well as its exibility in
that it can be modied for use in multiple different instances
of application, we conduct several experiments based on a
set of randomly generated home health care scenarios starting
from real life data stated in [4]. These real life data sets were
provided by German charity and Dutch software company
ORTEC in Netherlands. Each scenario is a combination of
the number of medical treatments called jobs required by
patients (40, 50, 60, 70, 80), the number of nurses (8, 12,
16, 20), six weighted values reecting the decision on the
objective function of the manager regarding the needs of the
Company. In particular, weights
1
and
2
reect the purpose
of satisfying the demand of patients, weights
3
,
4
, and
5
present the needs of the Company in terms of economy with
the aim of reducing as much as possible operational cost and
achieving a highest possible utilization of nurses, weight
6
states the aim of satisfying the demand of nurses. Table I shows
the combination of these six weighted values.
In all scenarios, the planning horizon is a week. There is
only one starting point called depot in the system. We assume
that all the services provided by the care provider require the
skills that belong to the set of ve skills regarding medical
treatments. The cost of one hour overtime is 15 dollars, the
value of four hours is the maximum allowed working time for a
day, and the maximum allowed value of overtime for the whole
planning horizon is 12 hours. Each job requires a service time
of 15 minutes to 60 minutes and a certain skill level from a
set of skills. In addition, the number of treatments required by
each job is randomly generated up to four treatments during
the planning horizon. The traveling times among the locations
of jobs are ranged from 20 to 45 minutes. The early starting
time randomly generated of each job is any time within a day.
Then the late starting time and hard time window violations
are generated dependently on the service time and the early
starting time. Penalty costs rising when the service starts out
of the range of the soft time window are ranged from 10 to 20
dollars for an hour. Each nurse who is available in the team
owns at least two certain skill levels from the set of skills
and has to be available at least two days during the planning
horizon. The contract working time of each nurses is ranged
from 56 to 70 hours for a whole week.
All experiments were performed on an Intel(R) Core(TM)
i7-3630QM CPU with 2.4GHz and 8.0 GB Ram. The solver
is GUROBI 5.5.0 C++ interface with a time limit of three
hours for exploring nodes. All results obtained are described in
Table II, Table III, and Table IV. The dash symbols under the
column Running time means that the solver was executed
until it reaches the execution time limit. The dash symbols
under the column Gap means that the optimal solution was
found and therefore there is no gap.
Table II summarizes the results of experiments on a set of
randomly generated home health care scenarios in which the
number of nurses is xed at the value of 12 and the number
of jobs is changed from 40 up to 80. The obtained results
summarized in columns 4 and 5 of the table are running times
in seconds and percentage gaps between the best value found
and the optimal value, respectively. These results reveal that
within a time limit of three hours for exploring nodes, even
though in the case of the number of job is 70, the optimal
solution can be found with the experiment on CoW4 that
focuses on only satisfying the demands of patients, the very
small gap 0.43% occurs with the experiment on CoW2 that
considers the demand of the Company regarding reducing the
operational costs to be more important than other demands,
or the percentage gaps are always less than 3% with other
experiments CoW1 and CoW3, our solver never nds the
optimal solutions in the case of the number of jobs is 80 for
all instances of the combination of weights. Moreover, there is
a signicant increase in the percentage gaps when the number
of jobs is increased from 70 to 80. When the number of jobs
is 40, 50, and 60, the solver quickly found optimal solutions
in every the combination of weights in much shorter running
times compared to the cases of the number of jobs is 70 and
80. Overall, observations show that with the current resource
in which the number of nurses is 6, in order to obtain the best
solution values when considering a weighted sum of objectives
regarding satisfying simultaneously the demands of patients,
nurses, and the Company the Company can operate their home
health care system to serve up to 70 jobs. When the aim is to
55
TABLE I. COMBINATION OF WEIGHTS
Combination
1

2

3

4

5

6
of weights
CoW1 0.300 0.300 0.125 0.125 0.125 0.025
CoW2 0.150 0.150 0.250 0.250 0.100 0.100
CoW3 0.200 0.200 0.100 0.100 0.200 0.200
CoW4 0.500 0.500 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
only satisfy the demands of patients as the objective function,
the number of jobs to be serviced can be 80 jobs.
Regarding changing in resource, we conduct several exper-
iments on a set of randomly generated scenarios in which the
number of nurses is changed from 6 up to 20 and the number
of jobs is xed at the value of 80. In Table III, columns 4
and 5 representing running times in seconds and percentage
gaps between the best value found and the optimal value,
respectively show the summarization of the obtained results.
The running time does not change noticeably among these
experiments but there is a considerable increase in percentage
gap among these experiments. This is not surprising, because
by increasing the number of nurses, we also increase the num-
ber of variables in the model. As a result of this mechanism,
our solver needs more time for exploring the nodes to be
able to obtain a best solution that is close to the optimal
solution. Therefore, in order to get the best possible solution
in a reasonable time, the sufcient value of the number of
nurses that the Company should have to operate their home
health care service under any the combination of weights in the
objective function is six. However, although under the same
need in the combination of weights in the overall aim, the
difference in the number of nurses causes the difference in the
solution value. The better solution value in terms of percentage
gaps does not mean that each single aim is better as stated in
Table IV presenting the detailed results of a particular scenario
in which the number of jobs is 80 and the combination of
weights is CoW4. For instance, the number of nurses is 20
causes the worst percentage gap compared to other cases in
which the number of nurses is less than 20. However, this
case produces the smallest value of the number of unsatised
requests although the patient nurse loyalty level is much higher
than other cases. Therefore, the Company may change their
decision on the number of nurses to really meet their needs in
a particular circumstance.
V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
In this paper we address the scheduling and routing is-
sues in home health care services problem in the context of
the improvement of life expectancy. We proposed a exible
model able to represent the problem in effective practical
terms, taking into account some realistic factors previously
not considered in the literature. A mixed integer programming
formulation for the problem is also presented. The experiments
implemented show obviously that the proposed model is ef-
cient and exible to procedure practical solutions in the real
home health care services problem. Its applicability is useful
to help the manager planning their home health care services
based on the specic needs of the Company.
The proposed model poses good challenges for future
research. In particular, efcient methods to solve the model
TABLE II. EXPERIMENTS ON CHANGING THE NUMBER OF JOBS
Nurses Jobs Combination Running time Gap
of weights (seconds) (%)
6 40 CoW1 489.77 -
6 50 CoW1 2270.33 -
6 60 CoW1 3436.20 -
6 70 CoW1 - 2.57
6 80 CoW1 - 4.84
6 40 CoW2 223.64 -
6 50 CoW2 1183.29 -
6 60 CoW2 1755.12 -
6 70 CoW2 - 0.43
6 80 CoW2 - 6.62
6 40 CoW3 293.45 -
6 50 CoW3 605.07 -
6 60 CoW3 2330.26 -
6 70 CoW3 - 2.70
6 80 CoW3 - 6.65
6 40 CoW4 179.86 -
6 50 CoW4 1080.71 -
6 60 CoW4 2926.53 -
6 70 CoW4 4180.57 -
6 80 CoW4 - 1.31
TABLE III. EXPERIMENTS ON CHANGING THE NUMBER OF NURSES
Nurses Jobs Combination Running time Gap
of weights (seconds) (%)
6 80 CoW1 - 4.84
8 80 CoW1 - 16.53
12 80 CoW1 - 50.81
16 80 CoW1 - 67.96
20 80 CoW1 - 73.18
6 80 CoW2 - 6.62
8 80 CoW2 - 20.87
12 80 CoW2 - 48.89
16 80 CoW2 - 71.60
20 80 CoW2 - 78.40
6 80 CoW3 - 6.65
8 80 CoW3 - 19.19
12 80 CoW3 - 51.70
16 80 CoW3 - 69.65
20 80 CoW3 - 78.36
6 80 CoW4 - 1.31
8 80 CoW4 - 19.55
12 80 CoW4 - 33.33
16 80 CoW4 - 62.20
20 80 CoW4 - 65.63
TABLE IV. DETAILED RESULTS OF A PARTICULAR SCENARIO IN
WHICH THE NUMBER OF JOBS IS 80 AND THE COMBINATION OF WEIGHTS
IS COW4
Nurses Running time Gap Patient-Nurse Unscheduled
(seconds) (%) loyalty level tasks total
6 - 1.31 0 153
8 - 19.55 0 133
12 - 33.33 0 102
16 - 62.20 2 80
20 - 65.63 3 61
have to be devised: it has to be expected that for large
instances commercial solvers will be unable to solve the
56
mixed integer programming formulation we proposed directly.
Therefore heuristic methods, possibly based on mathematical
programming will have to be developed. Extensions to the
model presented are possible to make it even more realistic,
possibly without increasing too much the complexity. For
example, together with the ofcial nurses who are available
in the team, it is possible to dene external nurses who are
available on the market to operate in case the ofcial nurses
are not enough to cover the given demand, but with a very high
cost. Moreover, it is possible to associate to each nurse both a
set of high skills and a set of low skills, representing activities
for which she has a full training or a partial training (but
sufcient to operate), respectively. Nurses are able to operate
on their low skills in case of emergency, but normally should
operate on their high skills only. Notice that nurses working
on their low skills can develop experience in these skills by
practical experience, and in the long run these skills can be
added to their high skills, with the associated benet for the
nurses career (similar ideas were proposed in [7]). Finally,
uncertainty about the effective presence of the nurses (they
might call sick) and about travel and service time could be
inserted into the model.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Thi Viet Ly Nguyen was supported by the Swiss National
Science Foundation through project 200020-140315/1: Ro-
bust Optimization II: applications and theory
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Multi-skill shift design for norwegian hospitals, Journal of Applied
Operational Research, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 137147, 2011.
57

Simulation methods in real option valuation

Tero Haahtela
Aalto University, BIT Research Centre
Helsinki, Finland
tero.haahtela@aalto.fi

Abstract This paper discusses different simulation based
methods applied for valuing real options. The methods are
classified as classical simulation, cash flow simulation for pseudo
underlying asset simulation, and advanced simulation based
optimization methods for valuing real options. These different
classes and their evolution are presented. The purpose is to
illustrate the variety of alternative methods and how they have
made it easier to value certain kind of investments with real
options, and even made it possible to solve more complex real
option investment problems than before.
Keywordsreal option valuation, simulation
I. INTRODUCTION
Simulation is the imitation of a real-world process or
system with a mathematical model. In simulation, a computer
is used to evaluate a model numerically, and data is gathered to
estimate the true characteristics of the model describing the
system [1]. The main characteristic that makes simulation
attractive to real option valuation is its ability to cope with
uncertainty in a very simple way [2]. When compared with a
purely mathematical analysis, simulation allows models that
are closer to the real world with more complexity and fewer
restricting assumptions of reality [3]. Monte Carlo methods are
usually intuitive and mathematically less demanding than
highly sophisticated models of equations. By simulation,
mathematical complexity is changed into a numerical problem,
and work is transferred to computer [4]. Interactions and
sensitivities of the system to various factors can be examined
by changing parameter values (ibid.). As a result, simulation is
a flexible way to analyze and value business situations with
different alternatives [5].
Simulation approximates numerically the correct rather
than exact solutions. The accuracy of results increases with the
larger number of iterations. For financial options, both
precision and efficiency and their optimal balance are relevant
as the prices fluctuate continuously and the portfolios need to
be re-balanced based on real-time information. Therefore,
analytical solutions or approximations of analytical solutions
are preferred over numerical simulation with financial options.
In case of real option problems, computationally less efficient
methods are usually sufficient for given level of precision.
Because there is no need to continuous re-balancing, also
computationally less efficient methods may be used.
Understandability, robustness and flexibility are main concerns
in selection of valuation approach. Another aspect is that the
required level of precision in case of financial options is far
more crucial than the required accuracy in case of real options.
Precision is not that essential in real option valuation in
comparison with capability to approximate and model the
reality on a sufficient level [6]. Most practitioners prefer an
approximate solution to a realistic problem over an exact
solution to an oversimplified problem that is only a rough
approximation of reality. As a result, simulation based
alternatives are much better suitable for real options than
financial options.
II. CLASSICAL SIMULATION METHODS FOR REAL
OPTIONS
Classical simulation methods refer to the older simulation
based option valuation methods. They were originally
developed for valuing financial options, but later they have
been applied to real options as well. Typically these
approaches are easier to use and they do not need special
software to be calculated.
A. Simulation for numerical integration
Monte Carlo method was invented in the late 1940s by
Stanislaw Ulam and Von Neumann while working on nuclear
weapon projects. Original use of Monte Carlo method was
Monte Carlo integration. Instead of attempting to carry out
directly high-dimensional integrations involving the transition
probabilities of many possible intermediate events and states
by the use of lattice methods and regular grids, MC single
chains of events are sampled at randomly chosen points in MC.
While this approach could be used for valuing financial options
and real options as well, increase in computing power and
more advanced valuation and simulation methods were
invented before the real option valuation was introduced.
B. Path sampling for an empirical distribution
Direct Monte Carlo simulation method (also called trace
driven simulation) suggested by Boyle [7] is based on the idea
of approximating the stochastic process numerically. The
valuation procedure consists of the following steps:
1) Random path for the underlying asset is sampled in a
risk-neutral world and the payoff of the option at the
maturity is calculated.
2) This is repeated at least several thousand times
3) The mean of the sample payoffs is calculated to get an
estimate of the expected payoff in a risk-neutral world
4) Payoff is discounted at risk-free rate to get the present
option value.
58

Direct Monte Carlo simulation has several advantages. It
can accommodate complex payoffs and complex stochastic
processes and take into account situations where payoff
depends on some function of the whole path followed by a
variable, not just its terminal value. Payoffs may occur at
several times during the life of the derivative [8]. The approach
has become more attractive relative to other numerical
techniques because it is flexible as well as easy to implement
and modify [9]. The terminal value distribution may also be of
any arbitrary shape or form and it does not need to be related to
any stochastic process. In the most straightforward way, the
results can be applied as: value of the European option is
defined as Risk Adjusted Success Probability * (Benefits
Costs) discounted to present value [10].
C. Sampling for a theoretical distribution
Instead of having to sample the whole paths, sometimes we
only need to know or sample the terminal value distribution
values. While there are closed-form solutions available for
partial differential equations for many option types (normal
distribution, displaced lognormal distribution), there also
distribution types that do not have this property. MCS is not
dependent of distribution form, and therefore sampling for a
theoretical distribution can solve any European option this
way.
D. Simulation for valuing path-dependent options
One significant strength of Monte Carlo simulation is
capability to value path dependent options whose payoff
depends on the path followed by the price of the underlying
asset, and not just on its final value. Examples of such options
are Asian options whose value depends on the average price of
the underlying asset. The price of such option is mean of the
sample values, which are calculated by sampling a random path
for the underlying asset in a risk-neutral world, calculating the
path-dependent payoff, and discounting the payoff at the risk-
free interest rate [8]. The only difference is that in a single
simulation run the payoff is the sum of the discretized path
values instead of being only dependent of the final payoff
value.
The approach is efficient for real options purposes, because
it allows use of any kind of stochastic processes including
jumps, mean-reversion, seasonalities, and other factors. Typical
areas of application for these options are projects related to
energy derivatives. Because some of these options are rather
operational by nature, their stochastic processes may also differ
from those typical for financial derivatives modeling. While
financial models often assume geometric Brownian motion and
perhaps mean-reversion and jumps, industrial operational
processes may also have trends, seasonality, cyclicality, S-
shape curves and even extreme value like events. Haahtela [11]
generally describes these kinds of options as cash flow
simulation embedded options as their value is based on
choosing the optimal forward-looking decision in each time
step during a single cash flow calculation simulation run.
E. American options with least squares regression
Monte Carlo simulation is by nature a forward-looking
approach, and therefore it was long considered not to be able
handle early exercise of American type options. However,
Longstaff and Schwartz [12] popularized and improved the
Carrieres suggestion [13] how to value American options with
simulation by applying least squares regression. The method
uses least-squares analysis to determine the best-fit relationship
between the value of continuing and values of relevant
variables at each time an early exercise decision has to be
made. At each exercise time, the payoff from immediate
exercise is compared with the expected payoff from
continuation. The optimal exercise strategy is determined by
the conditional expectation function that is estimated from the
cross-sectional information in the simulation by using least
squares. This is found by regressing the ex post realized
payoffs from continuation on functions of the values of the
state variables, and this fitted value provides a direct estimate
of the conditional expectation function. A complete
specification of the optimal exercise strategy along each path is
obtained by estimating the conditional expectation function for
each state.
The method itself is of use in valuing American options,
but it has also been a key idea for several cash flow simulation
based volatility estimations methods.
III. CASHFLOW SIMULATION FOR CREATING A
PSEUDO UNDERLYING ASSET
One way to apply Monte Carlo simulation for ROV is to
simulate cash flow calculation and its uncertainties and then
use this information for estimating the underlying asset price
and its stochastic behavior. Monte Carlo simulation on cash
flows consolidates a high-dimensional stochastic process of
several correlated variables into a low-dimension stochastic
summary process. Usually this process is a univariate
geometric Brownian motion, in which case the volatility
parameter o of the underlying asset is estimated by
calculating the standard deviation of the simulated probability
distribution for the rate of return.
A. Marketed Asset Disclaimer
Most common approach of this category is Copeland and
Antikarovs [14] Marketed Asset Disclaimer (MAD) approach
suggesting that the present value of the project cash flows
without options is the best unbiased estimator of the market
value of the project were it a traded asset. According to this
Marketed Asset Disclaimer, or MAD assumption, the project
itself is the underlying asset of the replicating portfolio.
Another assumption, based on Samuelsons proof [15], is that
the variations in the value of the project follow a random walk,
thus justifying use of geometric Brownian motion as the
stochastic process for the underlying asset. Along with the
MAD assumption, Copeland and Antikarov also suggest a
four-step valuation process framework with a specific volatility
estimation procedure for valuing investments with real options.
B. Cash flow simulation based volatility estimation
Several authors have corrected and extended the original
logarithmic volatility estimation procedure suggested in [14].
The methods are mostly based on the MAD assumption and
some modification on the least squares approach suggested by
59

Longstaff and Schwartz [12]. Godinho [16] corrected the
original volatility estimation procedure, Haahtela [17] and
Brandao, Dyer and Hahn [18] extend volatility to be stochastic.
Haahtela [19] presents a practical approach for parameterizing
a more general displaced diffusion process with time-varying
volatility. With a spreadsheet program and a Monte Carlo
simulation software, the present value of the cash flows and the
cash flow state variable values are recorded for each time
period during cash flow simulation runs. Then a regression
analysis is run for relating the PV for each time period to the
corresponding cash flow state variables. Each regression
equation provides an estimate of the expected present value as
a function conditioned on the resolution of all uncertainties up
to that time. Then, the basic regression statistics of Pearsons
correlation R
2
and sum of squares error (or standard error) for
each equation provide all the information required for
estimating how the standard deviation and displaced volatility
change over time. Brandao, Dyer and Hahn [18] use similar
approach for volatility estimation and call it as generalized
conditional expectations approach. They also show that the
approach is suitable for cases with a mean-reverting process
and stochastic jump to the variable cost process.
C. Non-parametric real option valuation based on cash flow
simulation
Based on the same MAD assumptions, Wang and Dyer [20]
suggest a non-parametric implied binomial tree based on
simulated cash flows. The approach implements multifactor
real option valuation techniques using risk neutral probabilities
inferred from the simulated market information. Their
algorithm relaxes the distribution assumption for the
underlying project value and provides an alternative approach
to valuing many high-dimensional real options problems with
generalized diffusion processes.
IV. ADVANCED SIMULATION BASED
OPTIMIZATION METHODS FOR REAL OPTION
VALUATION
Earlier mentioned simulation methods are sufficiently
straightforward to implement even with ordinary spreadsheet
program (and with a little help of a simulation software).
However, there are many complex, non-linear, and path-
dependent cases with possible delays and feedback loops.
System dynamics, neural networks and genetic algorithms are
each simulation based approach families with many different
variations. They have been suggested to solve some of these
issues in real option valuation. While the methods may be more
capable approaches, their use requires special software and
knowledge on their properties and capability to choose the
right model and algorithm for each case.
A. System dynamic models in ROV
Some investment problems may be so complex that the
previously mentioned path-dependent approaches might not
find the optimal solution. Some projects are characterized by
stochastic processes embedded in non-linear feedback
structures with delays. System dynamics models may be used
to estimate the cash flow resulting from these projects. If these
projects include managerial flexibility, a correct financial
evaluation of these cash flows requires the use of real options
methodology. Ford and Sobek [21] apply these approaches
together for switching among alternatives in product
development, while Tan, Anderson, Dyer and Parker [22]
demonstrate how to apply this approach in valuing wind power
industry.
B. Neural networks based optimization
Taudes et al. [23] and [24] suggest using neural networks to
value complex real option cases when analytical solutions do
not exist. The basic idea is to approximate the value function of
a dynamic program by a neural net, where the election of the
network weights is done via simulated annealing. Common
procedure is to use multi-layer feed forward network. In the
first stage, samples of training data are generated from
simulation or measurement. In the second stage, neural
network is trained by adjusting its weights so that the network
predicts best output matches, usually by minimizing some
norm of the error function between the predicted output of the
neural network and the targeted outputs. The main benefits of
this method as compared to traditional approximation
techniques are that i) there are no restrictions on the type of the
underlying stochastic process, and ii) no limitations on the set
of possible actions. This makes the approach especially
attractive for valuing real options in flexible investments. The
approach has been applied for valuing flexibility for costly
switching in production between several products under
various conditions [23].
C. Genetic algorithms
Genetic algorithms are search heuristics that mimic the
process of natural evolution. The approaches are based on
selecting and recombining iteratively the most potential
alternatives to generate a new set of solutions. Gradually the
solution evolves towards the optimum. The method is common
for finding solutions to complex optimization problems.
While Monte Carlo simulation is considered a good way to
model several uncertainties and their complex relationships, it
is not very good for finding optimal solutions for such
optimization problems. Dias and Rivera [25] present a model
of dynamic hedging aimed at optimization and using genetic
algorithms and Monte Carlo simulation. The approach offers
new possibilities for energy investment applications of
dynamic hedging based on real options theory. The case
example showed that several competing threshold alternative
curves drove the search to the optima region, within which
any one solution is indistinguishably close to an absolute-
optimum solution [25]. This result provided new insights about
real options evaluation not previously addressed in the
literature.
V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
This paper presented and classified several different
approaches for valuing real options with simulation. As the
examples illustrate, there are many different ways to utilize
simulations in real option valuation. Simulation based
approaches are also likely to gain more popularity among
practitioners and decision makers as they learn about the latest
60

discoveries in the field and fully understand the flexibility of
the simulation based models. Advanced simulation methods
have made it possible to solve more complex investment
problems than before. The main advantage, however, is that
simulation offers an easier way to model and understand many
investment cases with added realism and less restricting
assumptions than most alternative real option valuation
approaches.
VI. REFERENCES

[1] A. Law and D. Kelton, Simulation modeling and analysis. 3rd ed.
McGraw & Hill, USA, 2000.
[2] G. Cortazar, The Valuation of Natural Resources, in Real Options and
Business Strategy Applications to decision Making, (Ed. L.
Trigeorgis), Risk Books, pp. 263-278, 2000.
[3] P. Jckel, Monte Carlo methods in finance, John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
[4] D. McLeish, Monte Carlo Simulation and Finance, Wiley Finance, 2005.
[5] R. Razgaitis, Dealmaking using real options and monte carlo analysis,
Wiley Finance, 2003.
[6] M. Amram and N. Kulatilaka, Real Options: Managing Investment in
an Uncertain World, Harvard Business School Press, 1999.
[7] P. Boyle, Options: a Monte Carlo approach, Journal of Financial
Economics, Vol. 4, pp. 323338, 1977.
[8] J. Hull, Options, futures and other derivatives, 6th edition. Prentice-
Hall, 2006.
[9] P. Boyle, M. Broadie and P. Glasserman, Monte Carlo methods for
security pricing, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Vol.21 ,
pp. 1267-1321, 1997.
[10] S. Mathews, V. Datar and B. Johnson, "A Practical Method for Valuing
Real Options: The Boeing Approach," Journal of Applied Corporate
Finance, vol. 19, pp. 95-104, 2007.
[11] T. Haahtela, Cash flow simulation embedded real options, ICAOR 2010,
Lecture Notes on Management Science, pp. 418-430, 2010.
[12] F. Longstaff and E. Schwartz, Valuing American options by
simulation: A simple least-squares approach, Review of Financial
Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 113147, 2001.
[13] J. Carriere, Valuation of early-exercise price of options using
simulations and nonparametric regression, Insurance: Mathematics and
Economics. Vol. 19, pp. 19-30, 1996.
[14] T. Copeland and V. Antikarov, Real Options: a practitioner's guide.
New York, NY: Texere, 2001.
[15] P. Samuelson, "Proof That Properly Anticipated Prices Fluctuate
Randomly," Industrial Management Review, vol. 6, pp. 44-49, 1965.
[16] P. Godinho, Monte Carlo Estimation of Project Volatility for Real
Options Analysis, Journal of Applied Finance, Vol. 16, No. 1,
Spring/Summer 2006.
[17] T. Haahtela, Recombining Trinomial Tree for Real Option Valuation
with Changing Volatility. 14th Annual International Conference on
Real Options, 16-19 June 2010, Rome, Italy. Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1932411 2010.
[18] L. Brandao, J. Dyer and W. Hahn, Volatility estimation for stochastic
project value models, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol.
220, pp. 642-648, 2012.
[19] T. Haahtela, Estimating Changing Volatility in Cash Flow Simulation-
Based Real Option Valuation with the Regression Sum of Squares Error
Method, Journal of Real Options, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 33-52, 2011.
[20] T. Wang and J. Dyer, Valuing Multifactor Real Options Using an
Implied Binomial Tree, Decision Analysis, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 185
195, 2010.
[21] D. Ford and D. Sobek, Adapting real options to new product
development by modeling the second Toyota Paradox, IEEE
Transactions on Engineering Management. Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 1-11.
May, 2005.
[22] B. Tan, E. Anderson, J. Dyer, G. Parker, Using Binomial Decision
Trees and Real Options Theory to Evaluate System Dynamics Models of
Risky Projects, Proceedings of the 27th International Conference of the
System Dynamics Society, 26-30 July, Albuquerque, USA, 2009.
[23] A. Taudes, M. Natter and M. Trcka, Real option valuation with neural
networks, Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management,
Vol. 7, pp. 43-52, 1998.
[24] C. Charalambous and S. Martzoukos, Hybrid artificial neural networks
for efficient valuation of real options and financial derivatives,
Computer Management Science 2, pp. 155-161, 2005.
[25] M. Dias and M. Rivera, Real Options Valuation in Energy Investment
Projects: Modeling Hedging Strategies Using Genetic Algorithm
Software, Problems and Perspectives in Management, pp. 234-247,
2004.

61
A Practical Analytical Model for Valuing Early
Stage Investments Using Real Options
Yuri Lawryshyn
AbstractIn this work, we build on a previous real options ap-
proach that utilizes managerial cash-ow estimates to value early
stage project investments. Through a simplifying assumption,
where we assume that the managerial cash-ow estimates are
normally distributed, we derive a closed-form solution to the real
option problem. The model is developed through the introduction
of a market sector indicator, which is assumed to be correlated
to a tradeable market index and drives the projects cash-ow
estimates. In this way we can model a cash-ow process that
is partially correlated to a traded market index. This provides
the mechanism for valuing real options of the cash-ow in a
nancially consistent manner under the risk-neutral minimum
martingale measure. The method requires minimal subjective
input of model parameters and is very easy to implement.
KeywordsReal Options; Managerial Estimates; Closed-Form
Solution; Cash-Flow Replication; Project Valuation.
I. INTRODUCTION
Real option analysis (ROA) is recognized as a superior
method to quantify the value of real-world investment op-
portunities where managerial exibility can inuence their
worth, as compared to standard net present value (NPV)
and discounted cash-ow (DCF) analysis. ROA stems from
the work of Black and Scholes (1973) on nancial option
valuation. Myers (1977) recognized that both nancial options
and project decisions are exercised after uncertainties are
resolved. Early techniques therefore applied the Black-Scholes
equation directly to value put and call options on tangible
assets (see, for example, Brennan and Schwartz (1985)). Since
then, ROA has gained signicant attention in academic and
business publications, as well as textbooks (Copeland and
Tufano (2004), Trigeorgis (1996)).
While a number of practical and theoretical approaches for
real option valuation have been proposed in the literature, in-
dustrys adoption of real option valuation is limited, primarily
due to the inherent complexity of the models (Block (2007)).
A number of leading practical approaches, some of which have
been embraced by industry, lack nancial rigor, while many
theoretical approaches are not practically implementable. The
work presented in this paper is an extension of an earlier real
options method co-developed by the author (see Jaimungal
and Lawryshyn (2010)). In our previous work we assumed
that future cash-ow estimates are provided by the manager in
the form of a probability density function (PDF) at each time
period. As was discussed, the PDF can simply be triangular
Yuri Lawryshyn is an Associate Professor with the Centre for the Man-
agement of Technology and Entrepreneurship at the Department of Chem-
ical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto, e-mail:
yuri.lawryshyn@utoronto.ca.
(representing typical, optimistic and pessimistic scenarios),
normal, log-normal, or any other continuous density. Second,
we assumed that there exists a market sector indicator that
uniquely determines the cash-ow for each time period and
that this indicator is a Markov process. The market sector
indicator can be thought of as market size or other such
value. Third, we assumed that there exists a tradable asset
whose returns are correlated to the market sector indicator.
While this assumption may seem somewhat restrictive, it is
likely that in many market sectors it is possible to identify
some form of market sector indicator for which historical data
exists and whose correlation to a traded asset/index could
readily be determined. One of the key ingredients of our
original approach is that the process for the market sector
indicator determines the managerial estimated cash-ows, thus
ensuring that the cash-ows from one time period to the next
are consistently correlated. A second key ingredient is that
an appropriate risk-neutral measure is introduced through the
minimal martingale measure
1
(MMM) (F ollmer and Schweizer
(1991)), thus ensuring consistency with nancial theory in
dealing with market and private risk, and eliminating the
need for subjective estimates of the appropriate discount factor
typically required in a DCF calculation.
In this work, we show how our method can lead to an
analytical solution, if it is assumed that the possible cash-ows
are normally distributed. While this assumption may seem
somewhat restrictive, very often, when managers estimate
cash-ows (or revenues or expenses) the estimate, itself, is
uncertain enough that assumptions regarding the distribution
type ultimately only add noise to already noisy assump-
tions.
II. REAL OPTIONS IN PRACTICE
A. Project Valuation in Practice
According to Ryan and Ryan (2002), 96% of Fortune
1000 companies surveyed indicated that NPV/DCF was the
preferred tool for valuing capital budget decisions, and 83%
chose the WACC (weighted average cost of capital) as the
appropriate discount factor. While the methodology is well
understood, we review a few important details to highlight
the main assumptions regarding the DCF approach that are
often glossed over or not fully appreciated by practitioners. As
discussed in most elementary corporate nance texts (e.g. Berk
and Stangeland (2010)) the WACC (equivalently the return
on assets) for a company does not change with the debt to
1
As we discuss in Section III, the risk-neutral MMM is a particular risk-
neutral measure which produces variance minimizing hedges.
62
equity ratio when there are no tax advantages for carrying
debt. Therefore, without loss of generality, in this discussion,
we will assume that the company is fully nanced through
equity and thus, the cost of equity, r
E
, will be the WACC.
The standard approach to estimating r
E
is through the
Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), which has a signicant
list of assumptions (again, the reader is referred to any standard
text). The CAPM expected return on equity for a given i-th
company is estimated as follows,
E[r
Ei
] = r
f
+
i
(E[r
MP
] r) (1)
where r is the risk-free rate, r
MP
is the return on the market
portfolio and
i
=

i,MP
MP
(2)
where
i,MP
is the correlation of the returns between the i-th
company and the market portfolio,
i
is the standard deviation
of the returns of the i-th company, and
MP
is the standard
deviation of the returns of the market portfolio. The point
of introducing this well known result is to highlight the fact
that by applying the WACC for the valuation of a project,
by denition, the manager is assuming that the project has
a similar risk prole, compared to the market, as does the
company, i.e. that the and for the project are identical to
that of the company. Clearly, this will often not be the case
and a simple thought experiment can illustrate the point.
Consider the case where a manager needs to make two
decision: the rst is whether to buy higher quality furniture
with a longer lifetime versus lesser quality with a shorter
lifetime; the second is whether to invest in the development of
an enhancement to an existing product line or the development
of a new product. The standard DCF approach would use the
WACC to discount each of the alternative projected future
cash-ows. Clearly, this is wrong. The value of the furniture
cash-ows likely has little volatility and might, only slightly,
be correlated to the market. The product enhancement is likely
more closely aligned with the risk prole of the company,
while the new product development may, or may not be, highly
correlated to the market, but will likely have a high volatility.
Our proposed approach decouples the and for each project
being valued. For the case of valuing the project as of time
0, or, as will be discussed further, for the case of a European
real option, the effective of the project is determined by
the uncertainty in the managerial cash-ow estimates. The
for the project does require estimation, however, we provide
a mechanism to estimate it as well.
B. Real Options in Practice
As has been well documented (Dixit and Pindyck (1994),
Trigeorgis (1996), Copeland and Antikarov (2001)), the DCF
approach assumes that all future cash-ows are static, and no
provision for the value associated with managerial exibility
is made. To account for the value in this exibility numerous
practical real options approaches have been proposed. Borison
(2005) categorizes the ve main approaches used in practice,
namely, the Classical, the Subjective, the Market Asset Dis-
claimer (MAD), the Revised Classical and the Integrated. As
discussed by Borison (2005), each method has its strengths and
weaknesses. As Borison points out, all of the ve approaches
at that time, had issues with respect to implementation.
Arguably, one of the promising approaches is the MAD
method of Copeland and Antikarov (2001). A number of
practitioners have utilized the MAD method (see, for exam-
ple, Pendharkar (2010)), however, the theoretical basis for
the model is debated. Brando, Dyer, and Hahn (2012) have
highlighted issues with the way the volatility term is treated
in the MAD approach and have recommended an adjustment.
Both the Revised Classical (see Dixit and Pindyck (1994))
and Integrated (see Smith and Nau (1995)) approaches rec-
ognize that most projects consist of a combination of market
(systematic / exogenous) and private (idiosyncratic / endoge-
nous) risk factors. The latter provides a mechanism to value
the market risk of a project through hedging with appropriate
tradeable assets while private risk is valued by discounting
expected values at the risk-free rate. Properly applied, the
integrated approach is consistent with nancial theory. As
Borison (2005) notes, the integrated approach requires more
work and is more difcult to explain, but is the only approach
that accounts for the fact that most corporate investments have
both market and private risk. As we will show, our approach
also accounts for both market and private risks, yet is easy to
implement, and, in its simplest form, easy to understand as
well.
III. MODEL DEVELOPMENT
A key assumption of the MAD approach, as well as the
methods proposed by others, such as Datar and Mathews
(2004) and Collan, Full er, and Mezei (2009), is that the
risk prole of the project is reected in the distribution of
uncertainty provided by managerial cash-ow estimates. In
Jaimungal and Lawryshyn (2010), we introduced a Match-
ing Method, where we assumed that there exists a market
sector indicator Markov process that ultimately drives the
managerial-supplied cash-ow estimates. In Jaimungal and
Lawryshyn (2011), we extended our matching approach for
the more practical case where managers provide uncertain
revenue and gross margin percent (GM%) estimates. While
both models provide a mechanism to value cash-ows and
real options using a simple spreadsheet, because we assumed
that the cash-ows, or revenues and GM%, estimates were
triangularly distributed, numerical methods were required to
solve the project cash-ow and real option valuations. In our
work with managers in implementing our models, we realized
that very often managers prefer to provide simple estimates
consisting of a particular value with a given level of uncer-
tainty. For example, often, managers are just as comfortable
to provide a revenue estimate of, say $100 $20, as they
are to provide low, medium and high estimates, such as $70,
$100, and $120. In the former case, we can assume that the
distribution of the estimate is normal. This assumption leads
to an analytical solution for our methodology.
In the following subsections we develop our methodology
for the case of normally distributed managerial estimates.
First, we briey review our Matching Method for the general
63
case, where we derive a function, , that links the market
sector indicator process to a normally distributed managerial
cash-ow estimate. Then we utilize this function in the risk-
neutral minimum martingale measure to develop a very simple
expression for the valuation of cash-ows. Next, we develop an
analytical formula to value a real option based on the cash-ow
estimates, which is essentially a simplication of the model
presented in Jaimungal and Lawryshyn (2010).
A. Matching Managerial Estimates
Our objective is to provide a consistent dynamic model
that can replicate cash-ow distribution estimates provided by
managers. By applying the minimum martingale measure, we
are assured of a nancially consistent valuation. As such, we
assume that there exists a traded market index I
t
which the
manager can invest in, and we assume that the price of the
index follows geometric Brownian motion (GBM),
dI
t
I
t
= dt +dB
t
, (3)
where B
t
is a standard Brownian motion under the real-world
measure P. Here, we will assume that the manager has pro-
vided cash-ow estimates at times T
k
, where k = 1, 2, ..., n.
Specically, we assume the manager has supplied a cash-ow
estimate of the form
F
k
2
F
k
and we assume the resulting
distribution to be normal, i.e., N(
F
k
, (
F
k
)
2
). We assume the
cash-ow process to be F
t
.
We introduce an observable, but not tradable, market sector
indicator process A
t
which we use to drive the cash-ow
estimates provided by the manager. We assume the process
to be a standard Brownian motion (BM)
dA
t
=
FI
dB
t
+
_
1
2
FI
dW
F
t
, (4)
where dW
F
t
is a standard Brownian motion under the real-
world measure P independent from B
t
, and
FI
is a constant
(1
FI
1). As discussed in Jaimungal and Lawryshyn
(2011), choosing a BM instead of a GBM will have no bearing
on the results of the valuation from a European real option
perspective.
Next, we introduce the collection of functions
F
k
(A
t
) such
that at each T
k
, F
k
=
F
k
(A
T
k
). Furthermore, at each cash-
ow date T
k
we match the the distribution F
k
to the cash-
ow distribution supplied by the manager, namely,
_
a
F
k
F
k
_
,
where () is the standard normal distribution. Thus, we
require
P(F
T
< a) =
_
a
F
k
F
k
_
. (5)
Proposition 1. The Replicating Cash-Flow Payoff. The
cash-ow payoff function
F
k
(a) which produces the manage-
rial specied distribution
_
a
F
k
F
k
_
for the cash-ows at time
T
k
, when the underlying driving uncertainty A
t
is a BM, and
A
0
= 0, is given by
F
k
(a) =

F
k
T
k
a +
F
k
. (6)
Proof. We seek (.) such that P((A
T
) s|F
0
) =
_
s
_
.
Since,
A
T|F0
d
=
TZ where Z
P
N(0, 1),
we have that
P((A
T
) s|F
0
) = P
_
TZ
1
(s)
_
=
_
1
(s)
T
_

_
s
_
.
Consequently,
(A
T
) =

T
A
T
+
and the proof is complete.
We now have a very simple expression for which makes
the valuation of risky cash-ows very simple.
B. Valuation of Risky Cash-Flows
As discussed in Jaimungal and Lawryshyn (2010), the
real-world pricing measure should not be used, and instead,
we propose the risk-neutral measure Q, corresponding to a
variance minimizing hedge. Under this measure, we have the
following dynamics
dI
t
I
t
= r dt + d
B
t
, (7)
dA
t
= dt +
FI
d
B
t
+
_
1
2
FI
d
W
F
t
, (8)
where

B
t
and

W
F
t
are standard uncorrelated Brownian mo-
tions under the risk-neutral measure Q and the risk-neutral
drift of the indicator is
=
FI
r
. (9)
We emphasize that the drift of the indicator is precisely
the CAPM drift of an asset correlated to the market index
and is a reection of a deeper connection between the MMM
and the CAPM as demonstrated in (Cerny 1999). Given this
connection, our reliance on parameter estimation is similar
to those invoked by standard DCF analysis when the WACC
is used to discount cash-ows and the cost of equity is
estimated using CAPM. In DCF analysis the CAPM drift is,
however, estimated based on the companys beta, while in our
approach, the CAPM drift derives from historical estimates of
the sector indicator and traded index dynamics. Furthermore,
the riskiness of the project is appropriately captured by the
distribution of the cash-ows. Consequently, our approach is
more robust. Given the risk measure Q, the values of the cash-
ows can now be computed.
Proposition 2. Value of Risky Cash-Flow Estimates. For
a given set of cash-ow estimates, normally distributed with
mean
F
k
and standard deviation
F
k
, given at times T
k
, where
k = 1, 2, ..., n, the value of these cash-ows at time t < T
1
is
given by
V
t
(A
t
) =
n
k=1
e
r(T
k
t)
_

F
k
T
k
(A
t
+ (T
k
t)) +
F
k
_
,
(10)
64
and for the case where t = 0,
V
0
=
n
k=1
e
rT
k
_

F
k
_
T
k
+
F
k
_
. (11)
Proof. We begin by noting that from equation (8) we can write
A
T|Ft
d
= A
t
+ (T t) +
TZ (12)
where Z
Q
N(0, 1). The value of the cash-ows are given as
V
t
(A
t
) =
n
k=1
e
r(T
k
t)
E
Q
_
F
k
(A
T
k
)|A
t
=
n
k=1
e
r(T
k
t)
E
Q
_

F
k
T
k
A
T
k
+
F
k
A
t
_
.
We now utilize equation (12) so that
V
t
(A
t
) =
n
k=1
e
r(T
k
t)
E
Q
_

F
k
T
k
(A
t
+ (T
k
t) +
_
T
k
tZ
_
+
F
k
_
=
n
k=1
e
r(T
k
t)
_

F
k
T
k
(A
t
+ (T
k
t)) +
F
k
_
.
For the case where t = 0, A
0
= 0, therefore
V
0
=
n
k=1
e
rT
k
_

F
k
_
T
k
+
F
k
_
and the proof is complete.
Equations (10) and (11) provide a very simple alternative
to valuing cash-ows using standard DCF approaches. The
inherent risk of the project is captured by the cash-ow
uncertainty estimates, rather than relying on an exogenously
determined hurdle rate. We emphasize, that, while at rst
glance it may appear to be difcult to estimate
FI
, historical
data of the market sector indicator to a traded asset can be
utilized. Furthermore, if an assumption of
FI
is made, this
is only a single assumption compared to using the in the
CAPM formulation. If one wanted to be consistent with the
DCF CAPM based valuation, the from the could be backed
out. A major advantage of our proposed approach is that
two projects with the same expected cash-ow estimates will
necessarily be valued differently if their estimated distributions
are different. In our experience while working with managers,
this was a very favorable aspect of our model.
C. Real Option Valuation of Risky Cash-Flows
In the real options context, similar to the scenarios proposed
by many others (see for example Copeland and Antikarov
(2001), Datar and Mathews (2004), Collan, Full er, and Mezei
(2009)), we assume that at some time T
0
, managers can invest
an amount K in a project and receive the uncertain managerial
estimated cash ows at times T
k
. The value of the real option
at time t < T
0
can be computed under the risk-neutral measure
Q as follows
RO
t
(A) = e
r(T0t)
E
Q
_
(V
T0
(A
T0
) K)
+
A
t
= A
,
(13)
leading to the following Proposition.
Proposition 3. Real Option Value of Risky Cash-Flow
Estimates. For a given set of cash-ow estimates, normally
distributed with mean
F
k
and standard deviation
F
k
, given
at times T
k
, where k = 1, 2, ..., n, the value of the option at
time t < T
0
to invest the amount K at time T
0
< T
k
to receive
these cash ows is given by
RO
t
(A
t
) = e
r(T0t)
_
(
1
(A
t
) K)
_
1
(A
t
) K
2
_
+
2
1
(A
t
) K
2
__
(14)
where () and () are the standard normal distribution and
density functions, respectively, and
1
(A
t
) =
n
k=1
e
r(T
k
T0)
_

F
k
T
k
(A
t
+ (T
k
t)) +
F
k
_
,
(15)
2
=
_
T
0
t
n
k=1
e
r(T
k
T0)

F
k
T
k
. (16)
At t = 0,
1
reduces to
1
=
n
k=1
e
r(T
k
T0)
_

F
k
_
T
k
+
F
k
_
. (17)
Proof. Using equation (10) with t = T
0
and substituting
V
T0
(A
T0
) in equation (13) leads to
RO
t
(A) = e
r(T0t)
E
Q
__
n
k=1
e
r(T
k
T0)
_

F
k
T
k
_
A
t
+ (T
k
t) +
_
T
0
tZ
_
+
F
k
_
K
_
+
_
.
(18)
Dening
1
(A
t
)
n
k=1
e
r(T
k
T0)
_

F
k
T
k
(A
t
+ (T
k
t)) +
F
k
_
,
2

_
T
0
t
n
k=1
e
r(T
k
T0)

F
k
T
k
we have
RO
t
(A) = e
r(T0t)
E
Q
_
(
1
(A
t
) K +
2
Z)
+
,
which simplies to
RO
t
(A
t
) = e
r(T0t)
_
(
1
(A
t
) K)
_
1
(A
t
) K
2
_
+
2
1
(A
t
) K
2
__
completing the proof.
The result of Proposition 3 is signicant for it provides a
simple analytical real options valuation method that is easy
to apply and is consistent with nancial theory. Arguably, it
meets the requirements of reducing solution complexity, min-
imizing parameter estimation and being intuitive (see Block
(2007)). We believe that this result can easily be embraced by
practitioners.
65
IV. PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION
The theoretical foundation was established in Section III;
here we provide a practical implementation of the methodol-
ogy. We assume that a company is interested in investing in an
early stage R&D project. The project will require a substantial
investment of $50 million 2 years from now, at which point
sales will begin and cash-ows will be realized in years 3 to
10. The market parameters are assumed to be as follows:
Risk-free rate: r = 3%
Expected market growth: = 9%
Market volatility: = 10%.
Managers have estimated the cash-ows to be as depicted in
Table I and the correlation of the cash-ows to the traded
index are estimated to be 0.5. Furthermore, the managers have
supplied standard deviation estimates for each of sales, cost
of goods sold (COGS) and capital expenditures (CAPEX) as
a percentage of each, as presented in Table II. As can be seen
uncertainty increases farther out in the future. Furthermore,
COGS are estimated to be 60% correlated to sales and CAPEX
50%. If we assume that the correlation between COGS and
CAPEX is driven solely through their correlations to sales,
then the standard deviation of the cash-ows can be calculated
as follows,
CF
=
_
2
S
+
2
C
+
2
EX
2
S,C
C
2
S,EX
EX
+ 2
C,EX
EX
)
1
2
(19)
where denotes the standard deviation, denotes the cor-
relation and the subscripts S, C and EX represent
sales, COGS and CAPEX, respectively. The standard deviation
values are provided in Table III.
TABLE I
MANAGERIAL SUPPLIED CASH-FLOW (MILLIONS $).
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Sales 10.00 30.00 50.00 100.00 100.00 80.00 50.00 30.00
COGS 6.00 18.00 30.00 60.00 60.00 48.00 30.00 18.00
GM 4.00 12.00 20.00 40.00 40.00 32.00 20.00 12.00
SG&A 0.50 1.50 2.50 5.00 5.00 4.00 2.50 1.50
EBITDA 3.50 10.50 17.50 35.00 35.00 28.00 17.50 10.50
CAPEX 1.00 3.00 5.00 10.00 10.00 8.00 5.00 3.00
Cash-Flow 2.50 7.50 12.50 25.00 25.00 20.00 12.50 7.50
TABLE II
MANAGERIAL SUPPLIED STANDARD DEVIATION PERCENT ESTIMATES.
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
S
(Sales) % 10% 11% 12% 13% 15% 16% 18% 19%
C
(COGS) % 10% 11% 12% 13% 15% 16% 18% 19%
EX
(CAPEX) % 5% 6% 6% 7% 7% 8% 9% 10%
Using equation (11), the present value of the cash-ows
is calculated to be $58.8 million and using equation (17) in
equation (14) with t = 0 gives a value of $16.1 million for
the real option.
TABLE III
ESTIMATED STANDARD DEVIATIONS (MILLIONS $).
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
S
(Sales) 1.00 3.30 6.05 13.31 14.64 12.88 8.86 5.85
C
(COGS) 0.60 1.98 3.63 7.99 8.78 7.73 5.31 3.51
EX
(CAPEX) 0.05 0.17 0.30 0.67 0.73 0.64 0.44 0.29
CF
(Cash-Flow) 0.78 2.58 4.73 10.40 11.44 10.07 6.92 4.57
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this work we developed a method to value cash-ows
and the real option value of the cash-ows that requires only
the solution of a simple analytical formula. The model is
consistent with nancial theory and properly accounts for both
idiosyncratic and systematic risk. Through the introduction of
a market sector indicator, which is used to drive the cash-ows,
the methodology provides a natural mechanism to link the
cash-ows from one period to the next. Furthermore, because
the market sector indicator is assumed to be partially correlated
to a traded index, we are able to develop a valuation under
the risk-neutral minimum martingale measure. The method
requires minimal parameter estimation, as only the correlation
between the market sector indicator and the traded index may
not be easily obtained, however, we believe, it can often be
estimated based on historical data. Managers especially like
the intuitive aspect of the model where the value of the
cash-ows is linked to their estimated uncertainty. As was
discussed in Jaimungal and Lawryshyn (2010), depending on
the value of the correlation of the market sector indicator to
the market index, and the strike cost, K, the method will lead
to a decreasing or increasing real option value as cash-ow
uncertainty is increased. This feature is realistic, however is
not often properly accounted for in other real options methods,
because many other real options approaches presented in the
literature assume the value of the cash-ows can be perfectly
hedged with a traded asset i.e. they do not allow for
idiosyncratic risk. Ultimately, we believe that our proposed
method preserves the essential elements to make it consistent
with nancial theory, yet simple enough to implement so that it
can be easily embraced by practitioners not versed in nancial
mathematics.
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67
Mapping Real Option Valuation Model Types to
Different Types of Uncertainty
Mikael Collan
Lappeenranta University of Technology, School of Business
Lappeenranta, Finland
mikael.collan@lut.fi
Tero Haahtela
Aalto University, BIT Research Center
Helsinki, Finland
tero.haahtela@aalto.fi
AbstractThis paper discusses different types of uncertainty
and the fit of different real option valuation models to situations
under the different types of uncertainty. A suitability-based
mapping of real option valuation models for each type of
uncertainty is made and discussed. Implications to decision-
making are direct: wrong model selection may lead to unreliable
results and poor decisions.
Keywordsreal option valuation; uncertainty; financial
modelling, decision-making
I. INTRODUCTION
The focus of this short paper is to propose a mapping of
(six different) real option valuation (ROV) model types to
(three) types of uncertainty, based on a short analysis of the
models and the types of uncertainty, and how well the models
are able to take into consideration the type of information
available under each type of uncertainty. This is important,
because an unsuitable model-uncertainty combination will
likely cause the obtained valuation results to be unreliable and
may cause poor decisions. It is also rather clear from previous
literature on real option valuation [1] that one model does not
fit all situations. Interestingly, there are very few, if any
attempts to map real option valuation models by usability to
different types of uncertainty in the previous literature on real
options.
Real options are real world choices and possibilities to
make changes in projects and investments, before or during
their economic life. These choices and possibilities are often
referred to as managerial flexibility and they add value to
projects: ceteris paribus, a project with real options is worth
more than the same project without real options. How valuable
real options are is an important question, because it enables
cost-benefit analysis, when real options can be acquired and
enhances decision-making, when selection between projects
with real options is made.
The term real option is based on the observation that a
real option has a strong similarity to a financial option; both
offer their holder a choice, but not an obligation to act with
regards to an underlying asset at a given future time, or during
a given future period. ROV was originally based on the notion
that as the analogy between real and financial options is
strong, then financial option valuation models could be used
also for real option valuation. Six types of ROV models are
presented in section II of this paper.
Uncertainty is something that is always present in future-
oriented analysis, such as real option valuation. Uncertainty
however is not homogenous in the sense that there are
different types of uncertainty. In fact, it is commonplace that
the more distant the future that must be evaluated is, the more
difficult the analysis becomes. This increased difficulty is
often caused by the increased complexity (increased number
of the combinations of things, on different levels that may
happen) connected to the future and the decreasing amount of
information and knowledge that we have about the future.
Three types of uncertainty are presented in section III of this
paper.
Section IV of the paper maps the usability of the different
types of ROV models to the different types of uncertainty,
while section V is used for discussion and to draw some
conclusions and closes the paper.
II. TYPES OF REAL OPTION VALUATION MODELS
It may be possible to classify ROV models in many ways
(see e.g. [2, 3] for examples), here we have adopted the use of
six classes of ROV models, based on the mathematical
construct of the methods. Furthermore, we have selected a
representative model for each model type to act as a
background for closer inspection. The model types, the
representative models selected, and a short introduction of
each model type are given in the following:
i) Differential equation models, represented by the Black
& Scholes option pricing formula from 1973 [4]. These
methods express the option price and its dynamics using
partial differential equations to relate the continuously
changing value of the option to observable changes in market
securities. The boundary conditions specify the option value at
known points and its value at the extremes. Most of the
continuous-time models assume the value of the underlying
asset to follow a known stochastic process most often
geometric Brownian motion - and that the returns are normally
distributed. Input into the models are numerous variables
values. Probability distribution of the underlying is considered
to be exactly and objectively known based on available
68
historical market data and complete markets with the
opportunity for replication and hedging. Most applications in
the field are related to natural resources investments - oil,
natural gas, mining industry [5], where market data may be
available for estimating the underlying asset process
parameters.
ii) Discrete lattice models, represented by the Binomial
Option Pricing model by Cox, Ross & Rubinstein from 1979
[6]. Lattice valuation models are based on a simple discrete
representation of the evolution of the underlying asset value.
Theoretical valuation assumptions are very similar to those for
differential equation models, but the technical requirements
are less restrictive. Lattices are much more easily explained to
and accepted by management because the methodology is
much simpler to understand [7]. Lattices are valuable
especially with sequential and parallel compound options,
which is often the case in real applications [8, 9]. They allow
valuation of American options with early exercise possibility
and they are suitable for valuing barrier options and
derivatives dependent of several underlying assets [10, 11].
The approach can be a applied to several stochastic processes,
including a mean-reverting process for valuing an enhanced
oil recovery technology [12].
iii) Decision tree based models for valuing sequential
investments and other investments with mutually exclusive
alternatives. Decision tree analysis involves forecasting future
outcomes and assigning probabilities to those events. Using
DTA for real option analysis is very similar to the common
discounted cash-flow based trees. However, instead of using
actual probabilities, cash-flows are weighted using risk-
neutral probabilities derived from option pricing. This allows
using risk-free interest rate to discount the cash-flows to
present value [13]. The advantage of the DTA based approach
is that it provides a comprehensive overview for the
alternative scenarios of a decision. The method is also more
intuitive to understand and easier to model than binomial
lattices. DTA approach does not require stochastic process,
and it can accommodate even a great deal of uncertainty about
the future. In case of several overlapping and parallel options
the DTA method is not as flexible as lattice based approaches.
Especially common R&D stage-gate models, pharmaceutical
valuation models [13], and other sequential investments are
suitable for DTA real option approach (see e.g. [14] example
of oil investment). Smith & Nau (1995) [15] approach is
suitable for such cases where market and technical uncertainty
are kept separate. A decision tree without precise cash-flow
estimates and estimated probabilities can be used for
explorative mapping of the possible outcomes.
iv) Marketed asset disclaimer (MAD) models; an approach
originally by Copeland & Antikarov [9], where the project
cash-flow itself is the underlying asset. Copeland and
Antikarov suggest that the present value of the project cash-
flows, without options (i.e., the traditional NPV less
investment costs) is the best unbiased estimator of the market
value of the project, were it a traded asset. According to this
Marketed Asset Disclaimer, or MAD assumption, the project
itself is the underlying asset of the replicating portfolio.
Another assumption, based on Samuelssons proof (1965)
[16], is that the variations in the value of the project follow a
random walk, thus justifying use of geometric Brownian
motion as the stochastic process for the underlying asset.
Along with the MAD assumption, Copeland & Antikarov also
suggest a whole four-step valuation process framework for
valuing investments with real options. Most distinctive
property of this approach is that instead of observable market
data, the approach relies also on managerial assumptions
related to cash-flows. Valuation data is more subjective, and
uncertainty is assumed to be both parametric and structural
(yet they are not distinguished). Also market uncertainty and
technical uncertainty are often treated similarly and combined
together. However, the original approach has been extended
by several authors, and the approach been applied for valuing
R&D and pharmaceuticals [17].
v) Simulated cash-flow pay-off based models for option
valuation, represented by the Datar Mathews model for real
option valuation from 2004 [18]. This group consists of
approaches that use cash-flow simulation to determine the
terminal value distribution and especially its pay-off
distribution (or several distributions for different time
periods). Then in the most simple case [19], the value of the
option is defined as Risk Adjusted Success Probability *
(Benefits Costs) discounted to present value. Costs and
revenues may have different discounting rates. The method is
simple and intuitive, and does not have any assumption or
requirement for a stochastic process, and the method is
technically very robust. Both subjective and objective data can
be used. Technical and market uncertainty may be combined,
or kept separate. The method can be applied to nearly any kind
of uncertain investment valuation as long as the cash-flow
calculation parameter estimation is possible, at least on a
somewhat reliable level. The approach has been applied, e.g.
by the Boeing corporation [19] for R&D evaluation.
vi) Fuzzy pay-off based models, represented by the fuzzy
pay-off method (FPOM) for real option valuation by Collan,
Fullr, and Mezei from 2009 [20, 21]. These methods are
based on the idea that through creation of multiple scenarios
(minimum and maximum possible, and in between these two
extremes) for future cash-flows, it is possible to simplify
reality and to create a pay-off distribution. The pay-off
distribution is created by mapping the NPV of the generated
scenarios (usually three or four) to form either a triangular or a
trapezoidal distribution of the NPV. The pay-off distribution is
then treated as a fuzzy number and real option value is
computed directly from the distribution. The models use the
ROV logic, but calculation is done by using fuzzy arithmetic.
The FPOM method is intuitive and simplistic, directly usable
with spread-sheet software. Results can be easily presented
graphically. The method can use both subjective and objective
data in the creation of the cash-flow scenarios and is not
69
dependent on any pre-selected process. The approach has been
applied, e.g., for the valuation of future oriented assets, such
as patents [22, 23] and R&D projects [24, 25] .
III. TYPES OF UNCERTAINTY
The typology of uncertainty used here is adopted from
Kylheiko et al. [26] who divide uncertainty into three major
classes:
i) Risk. In the footsteps of Knight [27] we will speak about
risk, when the probability future events are objectively known,
or at the least knowable. It is assumed that the probabilities of
events are independent from the choice and actions.
ii) Parametric uncertainty. When a decision maker has
certain knowledge of the structure of the problem (future), but
is uncertain with regards to the parameters (probability) of the
problem, the situation is that of parametric uncertainty. In
other words the agent has an exhaustive list of the actions he
may engage in, of all the possible states of the world, and of
the consequences generated by his actions and the states of the
world, but he has only subjective degree of beliefs with
regards the probabilities of the occurrence of each state of the
world [26].
iii) Structural uncertainty. Structural uncertainty is based
on imperfect knowledge about the structure the future can
take. The implications of structural uncertainty are at least the
following: the set of possible relevant consequences of actions
cannot be known a priori, utility functions may remain
obscure, there may be unintended and unknown technological
and organizational consequences of actions, and subjective
probabilities of events may depend upon actions, which means
that these endogenized events can no longer be like (pre-
described) states of the world [28].
IV. MAPPING TYPES OF UNCERTAINTY TO ROVMODELS
Here the six types of ROV models are mapped to the three
types of uncertainty by considering information requirements
of the model types and the structure (mathematical choices) of
the model. The idea is to gain an understanding about the
usability of the different ROV model types under the different
types of uncertainty. Table I shows the mapping of the ROV
model types to the different types of uncertainty with a short
indication of the usability of the model for the types of
uncertainty.
TABLE I. MAPPING TYPES OF ROV MODELS TO TYPES OF UNCERTAINTY
Types of uncertainty
Types of Real Option Models
Risk Parametric uncertainty Structural uncertainty
Differential equation models
Usable, when the underlying
stochastic process is identified and
matched with a model. Needed input
information is available and the model
results are credible.
Usability compromised by the
restrictive assumptions of the models
and lack of available information.
Unusable. Information not available
to determine input values reliably
Discrete lattice models
Usable. Needed information is
available and model results are
credible.
Usability compromised by the lack of
available information.
Unusable. Information not available
to determine input values reliably
Decision tree based models
Usable for mapping the relevant
decisions and paths, precise valuation
results possible.
Usable for mapping possible
outcomes. Usability may be
compromised for creating precise
valuation results.
Usable for exploring different
possibilities, not enough
information for quantitative
analysis.
Marketed asset disclaimer
models
Usable. The relationship of the
underlying with a marketed asset is
fully known.
Usable in situations, where a
relationship with a marketed asset or,
e.g., an index can be reliably
established.
Unusable, because the structure of
the relationship between the
underlying and any marketed assets
is not known.
Simulated cash-flow models
Usable, the needed information is
available to construct simulation
models.
Usable generally, for as long as cash-
flow calculation parameters can be
reliably defined.
Unusable, because the structure of
the problem is not understood a
simulation model cannot be reliably
built and cash-flow calculation
parameters cannot be defined.
Fuzzy pay-off based models
Technically usable, but design is not
optimal for the situation.
Usable generally, based on
managerial estimates for cash-flow
scenarios, also when information is
incomplete
Usable for creating direction giving
quantitative results.
V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Mapping ROV model types to different types of
uncertainty is important from the point of view of making
coherent choices, with regards to model selection for analysis
purposes. If a model that does not have the capacity to handle
the type of situation for which it is selected, the results will
most likely prove to be untrustworthy and may lead to
erroneous (and costly) decisions. This paper has mapped six
ROV model types to three types of uncertainty in the attempt
to clarify model usability.
This is to the authors knowledge the first such mapping. It
seems that there are only few ROV model types that are usable
in analysis under structural uncertainty and that some model
types seem to be usable only under risk type uncertainty.
70
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71
A Credibilistic Approach to Risk Aversion and
Prudence
Irina Georgescu
Department of Computer Science
and Economic Cybernetics
Academy of Economic Studies
Bucharest, Romania
Email: irina.georgescu@csie.ase.ro
Jani Kinnunen
IAMSR,

Abo Akademi
Turku, Finland
Email: jani.kinnunen@abo.
AbstractRisk aversion and prudence are deeply studied
topics in probabilistic risk theory. In this paper an approach
of the two topics by credibility theory of B. Liu and Y. Liu is
attempted. The risk situations are modeled by fuzzy variables
and the indicators of risk aversion and prudence are dened in
the context of credibilistic expected utility theory. Properties of
these indicators are studied and approximate calculation formulas
are established. Finally, one establishes a relationship between
prudence and a credibilistic model of optimal saving.
I. INTRODUCTION
Probabilistic risk theory [1], [17] starts from the hypothesis
that the risk is mathematically modeled by random variables.
Important topics of risk such as risk aversion and prudence
of an agent in front of a situation of uncertainty are analyzed
in the framework of probabilistic expected utility theory [5],
[15], [18]. Risk indicators are dened and expressed by the
expected value and variance of the random variables which
model the risk.
Probabilistic models are not always efcient in the treat-
ment of uncertainty problems. In the literature there are at-
tempts to tackle uncertainty phenomena by possibilistic models
[4], [2], [8] or by credibilistic models [12], [13].
The purpose of this paper is to study risk aversion and
prudence by credibility theory. We shortly describe the content
of the paper.
In Section II we recall from [12], [13], [20] the meaning
of credibilistic expected value and credibilistic expected utility,
and some of their calculation formulas. As results we mention
an approximation formula of credibilistic expected utility and
a characterization theorem of convex (resp. concave) functions
by a Jensentype inequality with credibilistic indicators.
Section III denes the property of an agent of being
credibilistically risk averse and characterizes this property by
the concavity of the utility function. The notions of credibilistic
utility premium and credibilistic risk premium as measures of
credibilistic risk aversion are introduced. A formula for the
approximate calculation of credibilistic risk premium and a
Pratttype formula [17] in credibilistic context are proved.
In Section IV the property of an agent of being prudent
in front of a credibilistically modeled risk situation is intro-
duced. One proves that the necessary and sufcient condition
for the credibilistic prudence is the nonnegativity of the
third derivative of the utility function. Then the credibilistic
precautionary premium is dened, notion analogous to that
studied by Kimball [10] in case of probabilistic prudence. For
this indicator which measures the intensity of the credibilistic
prudence an approximation formula and a comparison theorem
in terms of Kimballs degree of absolute prudence [10] are
proved.
II. CREDIBILISTIC EXPECTED UTILITY
The impact of risk on optimal saving was studied rst by
Leland [11] and Sandmo [19] by introducing the notion of
precautionary saving. They proved that if the third derivative
of consumers utility function is positive. The converse was
established by Kimball [10], this way the connection between
precautionary saving and prudence in the sense of Kimball
being done. In this section we will study a credibilistic model
of optimal saving. We will dene the notion of credibilistic
precautionary saving; the positivity of this indicator signies
exactly the prudence of the consumer. The main theorem
of the section establishes the equivalence between the formal
denition of the prudence of a consumer from Section IV and
the positivity of credibilistic precautionary saving.
Let R be a set of states and T() the power set of
. The elements of T() are called events.
By [12], [13], a credibility measure on is a function
Cr : T() [0, 1] with the following properties:
(a)Cr() = 1;
(b) If A, B T() then A B implies Cr(A) Cr(B);
(c) For any A T(), Cr(A) +Cr(A
C
) = 1;
(d) For any family (A
i
)
iI
of subsets of with the
property sup
iI
Cr(A
i
) <
1
2
the equality Cr(
iI
A
i
) =
sup
iI
Cr(A
i
) holds.
A credibility space is a triple (, T(), Cr), where Cr is
a credibility measure on . A fuzzy variable is an arbitrary
function : R. The membership function : R [0, 1]
associated with is dened by:
(x) = min(2Cr( = x), 1) for any x R.
Let : R be a fuzzy variable whose membership is
: R [0, 1].
72
According to [12], [13], the credibility of an event A
T() can be expressed by
(1) Cr(A) =
1
2
[1 + sup
xA
(x) sup
xA
(x)]
The credibility distribution : R [0, 1] of a fuzzy
variable is dened by [13]
(2) (x) = Cr( x) for any x R.
A function : R [0, 1] is called the credibility density
function of if
(3) (x) =
_
x
(t)dt for any x R,

_
(t)dt = 1.
By [12], [13], the credibilistic expected value Q() of a
fuzzy variable has the form:
(4) Q() =
_
0
Cr( t)dt
_
0
Cr( t)dt
provided that the two integrals are nite.
Let u : R R be a utility function. The credibilistic
expected value Q(u()) [13] is introduced by:
(5) Q(u()) =
_
0
Cr(u() t)dt
_
0
Cr(u() t)dt
provided that the two integrals are nite.
Throughout the paper we assume that the credibility dis-
tribution of veries
(6) lim
x
(x) = 0; lim
x
(x) = 1.
In this case according to [13] we have
(7) Q() =
_
xd(x)
One can easily see that for any a, b R, Q(a + b) =
aQ() +b.
If u is a monotonic utility function then by [20]
(8) Q(u()) =
_
u(x)d(x)
When the credibility density function of exists the
following holds
(9) Q(u()) =
_
u(x)(x)dx
Lemma 2.1: Let g, h be two monotonic utility functions
and , R. If u = g + h then Q(u()) = Q(g()) +
Q(h()).
The following result appears implicitly in the proof of
Proposition 8.7 from [9], but it has an intrinsic importance.
Proposition 2.2: Assume that the utility function u has the
class C
2
. Then for any x R
(10) Q(u(x + )) u(x + Q()) +
u
(x+Q())
2
_
(t
Q())
2
d(t)
Proof: By the secondorder Taylor approximation for-
mula
u(x +t) = u((x +Q()) + (t Q())
u(x+Q())+u
(x+Q())(tQ())+
1
2
u
(x+
Q())(t Q())
2
Using formula (8) it follows:
Q(u(x + )) u(x + Q())
_
d(t) + u
(x +
Q())
_
(t Q())d(t) +
1
2
u
(x + Q())
_
(t
Q())
2
d(t)
But
_
d(t) = 1 and
_
(t Q())d(t) =
_
td(t) Q() = 0, thus

Q(u(x + )) u(x + Q()) +
u
(x+Q())
2
_
(t
Q())
2
d(t)
Proposition 2.3: If the utility function u is continuous and
monotonic then the following are equivalent:
(i) u is convex;
(ii) u(Q()) Q(u()) for any fuzzy variable .
Proof: (i) (ii) If u is convex then
u(Q()) = u(
_
xd(x))
_
u(x)d(x) =
Q(u())
(ii) (i) Let a, b be two real numbers, a < b. We consider
a fuzzy variable with the credibility density:
(t) =
_
1
ba
for x [a, b]
0 otherwise .
Then Q() =
a+b
2
and Q(u()) =
u(a)+u(b)
2
, thus
u(
a+b
2
) = u(Q()) Q(u()) =
u(a)+u(b)
2
. Thus u(
a+b
2
)
u(a)+u(b)
2
for any a, b R, from where, by [16], Theorem
1.1.4, p. 14, it follows that u is convex.
Corollary 2.4: If the utility function u is continuous and
monotonic then the following are equivalent:
(i) u is concave
(ii) u(Q()) Q(u()) for any fuzzy variable .
III. CREDIBILISTIC RISK AVERSION
We consider an agent having a continuous and monotonic
utility function u : R R and a fuzzy variable representing
a risk situation. Let be the credibility distribution of .
Denition 3.1: Let x R be the initial wealth of the
agent. The credibilistic utility premium w(x, , u) associated
with the triple (x, , u) is dened by
(1) w(x, , u) = u(x) Q(u(x +))
w(x, , u) is the credibilistic version of the probabilistic
utility premium from [7].
We recall from [8] that the credibilistic risk premium
(x, , u) associated with the triple (x, , u) is the solution
of the equation:
(2) Q(u(x +)) = u(x +Q() (x, , u))
From (1) and (2) it follows
(3) w(x, , u) = u(x) u(x +Q() (x, , u))
73
Denition 3.2: We say that an agent with the utility func-
tion u is credibilistically risk averse if for any wealth level x
and for any fuzzy variable with Q() = 0 , Q(u(x +))
u(x).
Remark 3.3: If in Denition 3.2 we replace the inequality
Q(u(x + )) u(x) with the converse inequality Q(u(x +
)) u(x) (resp. with Q(u(x + )) = u(x) then the
agent is credibilistically risk seeking (resp. credibilistically risk
neutral).
Proposition 3.4: The following assertions are equivalent:
(i) The agent u is credibilistically risk averse;
(ii) u is concave.
Proof: According to Denition 3.2 and Corollary 2.4 the
following assertions are equivalent:
u is credibilistically risk averse;
for any x R and the fuzzy variable with Q() = 0,
Q(u(x +)) u(Q(x +))
for any fuzzy variable , Q(u()) u(Q())
u is concave.
Similarly one can prove the following result.
Proposition 3.5: The following assertions are equivalent:
(i) The agent u is credibilistically risk seeking (resp.
credibilistically risk neutral).
(ii) u is convex (resp. linear).
Remark 3.6: According to Proposition 3.4 and [18], p. 8,
an agent u is credibilistically risk averse iff u is concave iff
the agent u is possibilistically risk averse.
Proposition 3.7: [9] Assume that the agent u has the class
C
2
and u
> 0, u
< 0. Then the credibilistic risk premium

(x, , u) can be approximated by
(4) (x, , u)
1
2
u
(x+Q())
u
(x+Q())
_
(t Q())
2
d(t)
Proof: Applying the rst order Taylor approximation we
have:
(5) u(x + Q() (x, , u)) u(x + Q())
(x, , u)u
(x +Q())
From (2), (5) and Proposition 2.2 one obtains
u(x + Q()) (x, , u)u
(x + Q()) u(x + Q()) +

u
(x+Q())
2
_
(t Q())
2
d(t)
from where (4) follows immediately.
According to [1], [17], the Arrow-Pratt index of the utility
function u is dened by
(6) r
u
(x) =
u
(x)
u
(x)
, x R.
Then (4) is written
(7) (x, , u)
1
2
r
u
(x +Q())
_
(t Q())
2
d(t)
Consider two agents with the utility functions u
1
, u
2
of
class C
2
and verifying u
1
> 0, u
2
> 0, u
1
< 0, u
2
< 0. We
denote r
1
(x) = r
u
1
(x) and r
2
(x) = r
u
2
(x) for any x R.
Applying (7) one obtains
(8) (x, , u
1
)
1
2
r
1
(x +Q())
_
(t Q())
2
d(t)
(9) (x, , u
2
)
1
2
r
2
(x +Q())
_
(t Q())
2
d(t)
Applying (8) and (9) we obtain the following credibilistic
version of Pratt theorem [17]:
Theorem 3.8: Under the above conditions on u
1
, u
2
, the
following conditions are equivalent:
(i) (x, , u
1
) (x, , u
2
) for any x R and for any
fuzzy variable ;
(ii) r
1
(x) r
2
(x) for any x R.
Remark 3.9: The credibilistic risk premium (x, , u) is
an indicator which measures the risk aversion of the agent u
in front of credibilistic risk: the bigger this indicator is, the
bigger the agents risk aversion is. Theorem 3.8 shows that, as
in the case of probabilistic risk, the comparison of aversions
to credibilistic risk of two agents is expressed in terms of the
ArrowPratt index.
IV. PRUDENCE IN A CREDIBILISTIC SETTING
The concept of prudence of an agent in front of a
risk situation described by a random variable was dened in
[10]. In this section we propose an approach to prudence by
credibility theory. We will prove credibilistic versions of results
of Kimball from [10].
Consider an agent with the utility function u of class C
2
and u
> 0, u
< 0. A fuzzy variable with the credibility

distribution will represent the risk situation.
Let x be the initial wealth, k a positive constant and a
zeromean risk in credibilistic sense (Q() = 0). We denote
(1) S(x, k, , u) = u(xk)+Q(u(x+))u(x)Q(u(x
k +))
One notices that
(2) S(x, k, , u) = w(x k, , u) w(x, , u)
Denition 4.1: The agent u is credibilistically prudent if
S(x, k, , u) 0 for any triple (x, k, ) with the above
signicance.
The above denition of credibilistic prudence is analogous
to the denition of probabilistic prudence in the form of [3],
[6]. Instead of probabilistic expected utility of [3], [6], in
Denition 4.1 the notion of credibilistic expected utility is
used.
Remark 4.2: From (2) it follows that the agent u is
credibilistically prudent iff the credibilistic utility premium
w(x, , u) is decreasing in x.
Proposition 4.3: Assume that the utility function u has
the class C
3
and u
> 0, u
< 0. Then the agent u is

credibilistically prudent iff u
0.
Proof: We derive relation (1) of Denition 3.1:
(3) w
(x, , u) = u
(x) Q(u
(x +))
Taking into account (3), Remark 4.2 and Corollary 2.4, the
following assertions are equivalent:
74
the agent u is credibilistically prudent;
w
(x, , u) 0 for any x and ;

u
(x) Q(u
(x +)) for any x and ;

u
(Q(x +)) Q(u
(x +)) for any x and ;

u
is convex;
u
0.
Let u be a utility function of class C
3
with u
> 0, u
<
0, u
> 0, a fuzzy variable and x R.

The notion of credibilistic precautionary premium intro-
duced by the following denition is the credibilistic analogue
of (probabilistic) precautionary premium of Kimball [10].
Denition 4.4: The credibilistic precautionary premium
(x, , u) associated with the triple (x, , u) is the unique
solution of the equation:
(4) Q(u
(x +)) = u
(x +Q() (x, , u))

Remark 4.5: (x, , u) is the credibilistic risk premium
(x, , u
).
We recall from [10] the denition of the degree of absolute
prudence:
(5) P
u
(x) =
u
(x)
u
(x)
for any x R.
Taking into account Remark 4.5, from Proposition 3.7 and
Theorem 3.8 it follows:
Proposition 4.6: (x, , u)
1
2
P
u
(x + Q())
_
(t
Q())
2
d(t)
Proposition 4.7: Let u
1
, u
2
be two utility functions of
class C
3
with u
1
> 0, u
2
> 0, u
1
< 0, u
2
< 0, u
1
> 0, u
2
>
0. The following assertions are equivalent:
(i) (x, , u
1
) (x, , u
2
) for any x R and for any
fuzzy variable ;
(ii) P
u
1
(x) P
u
2
(x) for any x R.
Proposition 4.8: Assume that u has the class C
3
, u
>
0, u
< 0, u
> 0. The following assertions are equivalent:

(i) For any fuzzy variable , the credibilistic risk pre-
mium (x, , u) is decreasing in wealth: x
1
x
2
implies
(x
2
, , u) (x
1
, , u);
(ii) For all x R, P
u
(x) r
u
(x) (prudence is larger than
absolute risk aversion).
Proof: Let be a fuzzy variable with the credibility
distribution . According to formula (2) from Section III:
u(x +Q() (x, , u)) = Q(u(x +))
=
_
u(x +t)d(t)
Deriving this equality and applying again formula (2) from
Section III:
(1
(x, , u))u
(x +Q() (x, , u)) =

=
_
(x +t)d(t)
=
_
g(x +t)d(t)
= Q(g(x +))
= g(x +Q() (x, , g))
where g = u
. From these equalities we obtain the

following expression of
(x, , u):
(x, , u) =
g(x+Q()(x,,g))g(x+Q()(x,,u))
u
(x+Q()(x,,u))
But u
> 0 and g is strictly increasing, thus the following

assertions are equivalent:
(x, , u) is decreasing in x;
For all x R,
(x, , u) 0;
For all x R, g(x+Q() (x, , g)) g(x+Q()
(x, , u));
For all x R, (x, , g) (x, , u).
Taking into account the equivalence of the previous as-
sertions, Proposition 4.8 and that P
u
= r
g
, the following
assertions are also equivalent:
For any fuzzy variable , (x, , u) is decreasing in x;
For any fuzzy variable and x R, (x, , g)
(x, , u);
For any x R, r
g
(x) r
u
(x);
For any x R, P
u
(x) r
u
(x).
The previous proposition establishes a relationship between
credibilistic risk aversion and prudence.
V. CREDIBILISTIC PRECAUTIONARY SAVING AND
PRUDENCE
In this section we present a credibilistic model of precau-
tionary saving. It is analogous to the well known probabilistic
model (see e.g. [5], p. 95) and to the possibilistic model of
optimal saving from [14]. The novelty of our model is that
the lifetime utility is dened in terms of credibilistic expected
utility from Section II.
The notion of credibilistic precautionary saving is intro-
duced as a measure of the impact of credibilistic risk on
the level of optimal saving. The main result of the section
connects the credibilistic precautionary saving with the notion
of credibilistic prudence formally dened in Section IV .
As a starting point we will use the probabilistic two-period
model of precautionary saving in the form of [5], p. 95. This
model is characterized by the following elements:
u(y) and v(y) are the utility functions of the consumer
in period 0, 1, respectively
in period 0 there is a sure income y
0
and in period 1
there is an uncertain income modeled by the random variable
y
s is the level of saving (for period 0)
r is the rate of interest for saving
75
Assume that the utility functions u and v have the class
C
3
and u
> 0, v
> 0, u
< 0, v
< 0.
The expected lifetime utility of the model is
(1) V (s) = u(y
0
s) +M(v((1 +r)s + y))
This probabilistic model is transformed into a credibilistic
model if we consider that the uncertain income from period
1 is modeled by a fuzzy variable and the expected lifetime
utility has the form:
(2) W(s) = u(y
0
s) +Q((v(1 +r)s +))
The consumers problem is to nd that value of saving s
for which the maximum of W(s) is attained. Then we consider
the following optimization problem:
(3) max
s
W(s)
One proves that W is a strictly concave function, therefore
the optimal solution s
= s
() of problem (3) is given by:

(4) W
(s
) = 0
We derive (2):
(5) W
(s) = u
(y
0
s) + (1 +r)Q(v
((1 +r)s +))

thus from (4) one obtains:
(6) u
(y
0
s
) = (1 +r)Q(v
((1 +r)s
+))
The uncertain model from above is associated with the
following model without uncertainty: the uncertain income
is replaced by the sure income Q(). The lifetime utility of
the second model is:
(7) W
1
(s) = u(y
0
s) +v((1 +r)s +Q())
and its optimization problem gets the form:
(8) max
s
W
1
(s)
W
1
is a strictly concave function and the optimal solution
s
1
= s
1
(Q()) of (8) is given by:
(9) W
1
(s
1
) = 0
In this case we have
(10) W
1
(s) = u
(y
0
s) + (1 +r)v
((1 +r)s +Q())

and the optimum condition (9) can be written:
(11) u
(y
0
s
1
) = (1 +r)v
((1 +r)s
1
+Q())
We face now two models of optimal saving: in one of
them risk is present , in another, it is not. For each of them
we have a maximum level of optimal saving, s
and s
1
. The
difference s
1
will be called precautionary risk saving
and will measure the change of optimal saving induced by the
credibilistic risk.
Theorem 5.1: Under the above conditions the following
assertions are equivalent:
(i) s
() s
1
(Q()) 0 for any fuzzy variable ;
(ii) v
(x) 0 for any x R;

(iii) The consumer with the utility function v is credibilis-
tically prudent.
Proof: The equivalence (ii) (iii) is exactly Proposition
4.3. In order to prove (i) (ii) we notice that from (6) and
(10) it follows:
W
1
(s
) = (1+r)[v
((1+r)s
+Q()) Q(v
((1+r)s
+
))]
W
1
is strictly decreasing, therefore according to the previ-
ous equality we have
s
() s
1
(Q()) iff W
1
(s
()) W
1
(s
1
(Q())) = 0
iff v
((1 +r)s
+Q()) Q(v
((1 +r)s
+))
Further, the equivalence (i) (ii) follows applying
Proposition 2.3.
Remark 5.2: The previous theorem shows that the con-
sumer v is credibilistically prudent iff the precautionary saving
s
1
is positive. By this we get to an intuitive meaning of
the notion of prudence: a consumer is prudent if the optimal
saving s
() in the presence of risk is bigger than the optimal

saving s
(Q()).
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper credibility theory is taken as a basis of risk
phenomena modeling. Then the risk is a fuzzy variable and
the risk indicators are approximated by credibilistic expected
utility [12], [13], [20]. We enumerate the main results of the
paper:
the characterization of convex and concave functions by
Jensentype credibilistic inequalities;
the denition of the notions of credibilistic risk aversion
and credibilistic prudence and their characterization;
the study of the notions of credibilistic risk premium
and credibilistic precautionary premium as measures of risk
aversion and prudence, respectively (approximate calculations,
comparison theorems).
the development of a credibilistic model of optimal sav-
ing and its connection with the notion of prudence introduced
in Section IV .
A future paper will attempt a credibilistic approach to these
topics when several risk parameters exist.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees
for useful comments on the rst version of the paper.
REFERENCES
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Jahnssonin S a ati o, 1965
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Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 36(3), 2008, 267276
[4] D. Dubois, H. Prade, Possibility theory, Plenum Press, New York, 1988
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Decisions under Risk, Princeton University Press, 2005
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ican Economic Review, 96(1), 2006, 280289
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Journal of Political Economy, 56(4), 1948, 279304
76
[8] I. Georgescu, Possibility theory and the risk, Springer, 2012
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of Information Technology Research, 5(4), October-December 2012,
63-84
[10] M. S. Kimball, Precautionary saving in the small and in the large,
Econometrica, 58, 1990, 5373
[11] H. Leland, Saving and uncertainty: the precautionary demand for
saving, Quarterly J. Economics 82, 1968, 465473
[12] B. Liu, Y. K. Liu, Expected value of fuzzy variable and fuzzy expected
value models, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, 10, 2002, 445
450
[13] B. Liu, Uncertainty theory, Springer, Heidelberg, 2007
[14] A. M. Lucia Casademunt, I. Georgescu, Optimal saving and prudence
in a possibilistic framework, Advances in Intelligent Systems and
Computing, vol. 2017, 2013, 6168
[15] A. MasColell, M. D. Whinston, J. R. Green, Microeconomic theory,
Oxford University Press, USA, 1995
[16] C. P. Niculescu, L. E. Perrson, Convex functions and their applications:
A contemporary approach, Springer, 2005
[17] J. Pratt, Risk aversion in the small and in the large, Econometrica, 32,
1964, 122130
[18] J. Quiggin, Generalized expected utility theory, Kluwer-Nijhoff, Am-
sterdam, 1993
[19] A. Sandmo, The effect of uncertainty on saving decision, Rev. Eco-
nomic Studies 37, 1970, 353360
[20] F. Xue, W. S. Tang, R. Zhao, The expected value of a function of a
fuzzy variable with a continuous membership function, Computers &
Mathematics with Applications, 55, 2008, 1215-1224
77
Estimating the potential impact oI eIIiciency
improvement in reducing nutrient emissions
Natalia Kuosmanen
MTT Agrifood Research Finland
Economic Research
Helsinki, Finland
Timo Kuosmanen
School of Business
Aalto University
Helsinki, Finland

AbstractA new two-stage approach to modeling the nutrient
emissions of crop farms is developed. In the first stage, we estimate
the classic production function using farm-level data. We apply the
stochastic nonparametric envelopment of data (StoNED) method that
combines the axiomatic, nonparametric modeling of the production
technology with a stochastic, probabilistic treatment of inefficiency
and noise. Given the estimated input saving and output expansion
potential for each farm in the sample, we estimate the impacts of the
decreased fertilizer use and the increased crop yield on the nutrient
balance of farms. This provides an aggregate level estimate on how
much nutrient emissions could be abated through improving the
operational efficiency of farms without any new technical innovations
or down-scaling of the activity.
Keywordsenvironmental performance; frontier estimation;
productive efficiency analysis
I. INTRODUCTION
Productivity and efficiency analysis is frequently applied in
the field of agricultural economics to estimate the total factor
productivity growth at the sector and farm levels, to decompose
the productivity changes to components of technological
progress, operational efficiency and scale efficiency, to identify
efficiency improvement targets and best-practice benchmarks,
and to estimate shadow prices for undesirable outputs such as
nutrient leaching to water systems (see e.g., [1], [2], [3]). All
different applications of productive efficiency analysis are
based on the estimation of the production frontiers in one way
or another.
The two main approaches to estimating the best-practice
frontiers are the nonparametric data envelopment analysis
(DEA: [4], [5]) and the parametric stochastic frontier analysis
(SFA: [6], [7]). The main appeal of DEA lies in its
nonparametric treatment of the frontier, which does not assume
a particular functional form but relies on the general regularity
properties such as monotonicity, convexity, and homogeneity.
However, DEA attributes all deviations from the frontier to
inefficiency, and completely ignores any stochastic noise in the
data. The key advantage of SFA is its stochastic treatment of
residuals, decomposed into a non-negative inefficiency term
and a disturbance term that accounts for measurement errors
and other random noise. However, SFA builds on the
parametric regression techniques, which require an ex ante
specification of the functional form.
Bridging the gap between SFA and DEA was recognized as
an important research question already in the early 1990s. The
emerging literature on semi/nonparametric stochastic frontier
estimation has thus far mainly departed from the SFA side,
replacing the parametric frontier function by a nonparametric
specification that can be estimated by kernel regression or local
maximum likelihood (ML) techniques. Fan et al. [8] and Kneip
and Simar [9] were among the first to apply kernel regression
to frontier estimation in the cross-sectional and panel data
contexts, respectively. Fan et al. [8] proposed a two-step
method where the shape of the frontier is first estimated by
kernel regression, and the conditional expected inefficiency is
subsequently estimated based on the residuals, imposing the
same distributional assumptions as in standard SFA. Kneip and
Simar [9] similarly use kernel regression for estimating the
frontier, but they make use of panel data to avoid the
distributional assumptions.
Banker and Maindiratta [10] were the first to consider ML
estimation of the stochastic frontier model subject to
nonparametric shape constraints regarding the frontier. Their
monotonicity and concavity constraints are analogous to DEA,
but solving the resulting complex ML problem has proved
extremely difficult, if not impossible in practical applications.
No reported applications of the Banker and Maindirattas
constrained ML method are known in the literature.
In a series of recent papers, [11], [12], [13], [14] and [15]
develop a new encompassing framework referred to as
stochastic nonparametric envelopment of data (StoNED).
Specifically, they introduce a stochastic SFA-style composite
error term to a nonparametric, DEA-style piecewise linear
frontier. Similar to DEA, the StoNED approach does not
assume any particular functional form for the frontier; it
identifies the function that best fits the data from the family of
continuous, monotonic increasing, concave functions that can
be non-differentiable. Kuosmanen and Kortelainen [12] noted
that both SFA and DEA can be constrained special cases of the
more general StoNED model.
An earlier study [16] presented the first application of the
StoNED method to the farm-level data from agricultural
production, focusing on the environmental performance of a
sample of Finnish dairy farms. The present paper extends the
scope of the previous study in two important respects. First, we
shift attention on crop farms specialized in wheat cultivation.
Second, we elaborate the modeling of nutrient leaching. Some
78
problems with the conventional approach of modeling nutrient
surplus as an input or undesirable output are discussed. Further,
an alternative two-stage method that avoids these problems is
developed.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In the next
section we introduce the theoretical model of production
involving undesirable outputs. We then present the StoNED
method that can be applied for estimating the theoretical
model. We then describe our empirical data and present the
estimation results. A brief summary and discussion of future
research topics concludes the paper.
II. STONED MODEL
The vector of inputs (including labor, capital, energy, and
intermediate inputs) is denoted by x and the output is denoted
by y. The production technology is represented by the
production function y = f(x). We assume that function f
belongs to the class of continuous, monotonic increasing and
globally concave functions. In contrast to the SFA literature, no
specific functional form for f is assumed a priori; our
specification of the production function proceeds along the
nonparametric lines of the DEA literature.
The observed output
i
y of firm i may differ from ( )
i
f x
due to inefficiency and noise. We follow the SFA literature and
introduce a composite error term
i i i
v u = , which consists of
the inefficiency term 0
i
u > and the idiosyncratic error term
i
v , formally,
( ) ( ) , 1,...,
i i i i i i
y f f u v i n = + = + = x x . (1) + = . (1) (1)
Terms
i
u and
i
v ( 1,..., i n = ) are assumed to be statistically
independent of each other as well as of inputs
i
x . Furthermore,
we follow the standard SFA practice and assume
2
. .
(0, )
i u
i i d
u N and
2
. .
(0, )
i v
i i d
v N .
In model (1), the deterministic part (i.e., production
function f) is defined analogous to DEA, while the stochastic
part (i.e., composite error term
i
) is defined similar to SFA.
As a result, model (1) encompasses the classic SFA and DEA
models as its constrained special cases. Specifically, if f is
restricted to some specific functional form (instead of the class
F
2
), model (1) boils down to the SFA model by [6]. On the
other hand, if we impose the restriction
2
0
v
= and relax the
distributional assumption concerning the inefficiency term, we
obtain the single-output DEA model with an additive output-
inefficiency, first considered by Afriat [17]. In this sense, both
SFA and DEA can be seen as constrained special cases of
model (1).
It is easy to write a theoretical model like (1); the main
challenge is its estimation. In this paper we propose a new
strategy to estimating model (1), referred to as stochastic
nonparametric envelopment of data (StoNED). Our objective is
to estimate the deterministic part of the model in a fully
nonparametric fashion imposing a minimal set of assumptions,
in the spirit of DEA. Similar to DEA, we estimate the shape of
the frontier by exploiting the regularity properties from the
microeconomic theory (i.e., continuity, monotonicity, and
concavity of f), free of any distributional assumptions or
assumptions about the functional form of f or its smoothness.
However, in the cross-sectional setting it is impossible to
distinguish between inefficiency and noise without imposing
some distributional assumptions. Having estimated the shape of
function f, we make use of the standard distributional
assumptions adopted from the SFA literature to estimate the
expected location of the frontier f, and the firm-specific
conditional expected values for the inefficiency term. In
summary, the StoNED method consists of two-steps:
Step 1: Estimate the shape of function f by Convex
Nonparametric Least Squares (CNLS) regression
2
, ,
1
min
, 1,...,
1,...,
n
i
i
i i i i i
i i i h h i
i
y
h i n
i n

=
= + +
+ + =
=

x
x x
0

Step 2: Using residuals from the CNLS regression,
estimate the variance parameters
2 2
,
u v
by using the method
of moments or pseudolikelihood techniques, and compute the
conditional expected values of inefficiency. Subsequently, the
expected value and the parameters of the inefficiency and
noise distributions can be estimated based on the regression
residuals by the method of moments or pseudolikelihood
techniques (see [12] for details).
III. MODELING OF NUTRIENT EMISSIONS
In the literature of productive efficiency analysis, the
conventional approach to modeling nutrient emissions is to
treat the nitrogen surplus as an input variable or as an
undesirable output, e.g., [18]. However, the conventional
approach is problematic both in the DEA and SFA- type
modeling. Firstly, DEA requires that the inputs and outputs are
ratio-scale variables. However, the nitrogen surplus is only an
interval-scale variable: it is measured as a difference of the
inflow and outflow of nitrogen. A related issue is that the
nitrogen surplus may be less than or equal to zero. Secondly,
from the perspective of the traditional production model
assumed in the SFA literature, the nitrogen surplus is not a
factor of production: it is possible to produce output even if the
nitrogen surplus is negative or zero. Further, increase in the
nitrogen surplus does not necessarily have an increasing effect
on the output. Due to these problems, in this study we consider
an alternative approach to modeling the nutrient problem.
In crop farms, high nitrogen surplus is generally due to the
excessive use of fertilizers. Fertilizer is a ratio-scale input
variable whereas the nitrogen surplus is not. Therefore, we
resort to a two-stage approach where we first estimate the
classic production function that includes the fertilizer use as
one of the inputs. In the second stage, we estimate the potential
impact of efficiency improvement on the nitrogen balance of
the farm. Note that efficiency improvement can influence the
79
nutrient surplus in two ways. Firstly, decreasing the input use,
including the fertilizer input, will decrease the inflow of
nitrogen. Secondly, increasing the output (crop yield) will
increase the outflow of nutrient. Both have a favorable effect
on the nutrient balance. In the application to be considered
next, we examine both the input decrease and output expansion
scenarios.
IV. DATA
We next apply the StoNED method described in the
previous section to the empirical data of Finnish crop farms
specialized in wheat. The data set is extracted from the Farm
Accountancy Data Network (FADN) database. The following
variables were considered: output variable is yield of wheat
(100kg/ha), input variables are labor (hr/ha), farm capital
(/ha), total energy cost (/ha) and fertilizers (kgN/ha), and the
environmental variable of interest is the nitrogen surplus
(kg/ha). An overview of the key characteristics of the data is
presented in Table 1 in the form of the descriptive statistics:
mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values.
TABLE I. DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR THE SAMPLE OF WHEAT FARMS;
YEAR 2004, SAMPLE SIZE N=141.
Variable Mean St. Dev. Min Max
Yield of wheat, 100kg/ha 36.6 11.3 7.2 71.6
Labor, hr/ha 29.0 17.4 5.8 117.8
Farm capital, /ha 2853.5 1302.1 977.1 7918.9
Energy, /ha 89.9 41.3 0.0 279.9
Fertilizer, kgN/ha 135.8 62.6 0.0 385.3
Nitrogen surplus kgN/ha 26.9 12.3 -0.1 77.1

V. MAIN RESULTS
We first applied the StoNED method to estimate efficiency
in input use at the farm level. Recall that the StoNED method
allows us to distinguish whether deviations from the frontier
that are due to inefficiency or random noise. The estimated
standard deviation of inefficiency was 11.6, whereas the
estimated standard deviation of noise was 7.82. Both standard
deviations were found to be statistically significant at the one
percent significance level.
The expected inefficiency loss was estimated as 9.25 /ha.
This is approximately 20% of the average wheat revenue per
hectare. Thus, expressed in relative terms, the average
efficiency at the sample level was approximately 80%.
Next, we estimated the potential impact on the nitrogen
surplus that would be achievable through improvement of
technical efficiency. Specifically, suppose that all farms in the
sample could catch up to the level of performance shown by
the best farms in the sample. This would not require any new
technical innovation, just that all farms could operate according
to the current best practice. This is of course a very ambitious
target as such, and unlikely to be met in practice. Nevertheless,
it is interesting to examine what would be the impact of the
maximum possible efficiency improvement on the nutrient
balance. If the efficiency improvement does not suffice to bring
the nutrient surplus to a sustainable level, the further decrease
must come either through technical progress or down-scaling
production. In this respect, utilizing the efficiency
improvement potential to the maximum extent might be the
easiest and the most cost-efficient way to decrease nutrient
leaching.
Efficiency improvement could be implemented by
producing the current level of output by less input, or using the
current input to produce a larger amount of output. In the case
of crop farms, both decrease of fertilizer input and the greater
yield of output have a favorable effect on the nutrient balance.
Thus, both input and output orientations were considered.
In the output orientation, the impact comes through larger
uptake of nitrogen in the harvested crop keeping the land use
and fertilizers use at the present level. This would result only
1.9 kg/ha decrease in nitrogen surplus. In the input orientation,
we keep the present output level constant and decrease the
input use including land and fertilizer, which would result in
5.4 kg/ha decrease in nitrogen surplus. While any kind of
efficiency improvement has a desirable effect, the direction of
input saving or output expansion matters as well. A more
favorable effect is achieved through input-oriented efficiency
improvement.
In conclusions, there is some scope for decreasing nitrogen
surplus through efficiency improvement, but it is rather limited.
Our results show that the input orientation allows for larger
improvement potential. Even though it is not at all clear what
would be the sustainable level of nitrogen surplus, at least, it is
possible to estimate how much emissions could potentially be
decreased if all farms operated as efficiently as their most
productive peers.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
We have explored a new approach to modeling and
estimating the potential impact of efficiency improvement in
reducing the nutrient emissions. The novel features of the study
include the use of the StoNED method to estimating the
frontier production function, and the subsequent estimation of
the nutrient balance based on the decrease of fertilized input or
increase of crop yield achievable through efficiency
improvement. The attractive feature of the StoNED approach is
that it enables us to combine the nonparametric, axiomatic
approach to modeling the production technology with the
stochastic modeling of inefficiency and noise. Further, drawing
distinction between the productive input (fertilizer) and the
associated environmental impact (nutrient surplus) avoids the
theoretical and technical problems of the conventional
modeling of nutrient surplus as an input or output variable.
Although we recognize that some environmental problems
may depend on multiple inputs and/or outputs in a more
complex way, we believe the two-stage approach considered in
this paper has potential applications in other areas as well. For
example, the green-house gas (GHG) emissions arising in the
manufacturing sector are mainly due to one specific input: the
energy use. Thus, a similar approach could be applied to
estimating the potential reduction of GHG emissions through
improving productive efficiency in the manufacturing
industries.
80
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81
A model for estimating and visualizing duration and
time evolution of capability through decision points
Juha-Pekka Nikkarila
Defence Forces Technical Research Centre
Riihim aki
Finland
Juhani H am al ainen
Defence Forces Technical Research Centre
Riihim aki
Finland
AbstractCapabilities are needed for achieving prots in
competitive situations. We shall here present a schematic model
how duration of capability can be analyzed and visualized in
discrete decision making process. The duration time of capability
will be dened by the condition that capability vanishes and
the consumption of capability is due to decisions provided at
decision points. We introduce a function, which maps duration
times to achieved prots and remaining capability values, to
consider goodness of applied decisions. These quantities are
useful in comparing different decision sequences with respect to
corresponding capability duration and achieved prots. In order
to improve given decision sequence, we consider time derivative
of capability (value) and in particular its minimum values i.e. to
identify corresponding time instants or intervals. The minimum
values provide information of the fastest decreases of capability
and they might be useful in identifying the reasons for that.
The introduced procedure is applicable if the consumption of
capabilities due to different decision is known or estimated.
I. INTRODUCTION
Capability is a widely used term for describing an ability
to perform actions. An organization may use its capabilities
for achieving its strategic goals. In real world, competing
organizations may have conicting interests. Two companies
sharing the same markets is an example of conicting interests.
Both rms try to make a prot and e.g. losing customers would
be considered as a drawback to the business. Furthermore,
a loss of a customer to one company might be a gain of a
customer to another company. Consequently, both companies
use their capabilities and compete with each other in order
to gain competitive advantage. In economics, capabilities are
usually divided into nancial, strategic, technological and
organizational capabilities. [1], [2], [3]. Dynamic capability
has been introduced and dened to help to understand time
dependent challenges [4], [5], [6], [7].
Different nations may also have conicting interests, but
usually one achieves satisfactory results via diplomacy. Na-
tions tend to design their defense organizations by estimating
what type of threats the nation may encounter; creating and
developing its military capabilities [8], [9] for handling the
threats [10], [11]. A state may have to use also its military
capability in order to achieve its strategic (and political) targets
[12], [13]. One may consider humanitarian interventions as an
example of using military capability for political reasons [14].
Usually there is an ally of nations or e.g. the UN or NATO
conducting humanitarian interventions since one has to gain a
strong political authority to the operation [15].
In this study, we discuss on modeling of capabilities
duration in situations where capabilities will vanish within
nite time. The organization uses its capability for improving
its competitive position compared to its competitors. The using
strategy will be modeled through decisions, which determines
the capabilities evolution. In other words, the capability is
decided to use for gaining prot to its owner organization or
for decreasing the conicting organizations capabilities.
Modeling outcomes at competitive situations is tradition-
ally provided by Game Theory. However, Game Theory pro-
vides prots or outcomes, but we focus on time evolution of
capability during sequential decisions. In a sense Game Theory
is intrisically present in our model since the opponents choices
affects on the decisions. Consequently, dynamic programming
can be used in resolving the maximum duration of the capa-
bility. It is understood that the capability duration is not likely
the only decision variable. Therefore, we introduce also other
mathematical tools for improving the analysis.
II. RESOLVING AND PROLOGING MAXIMUM DURATION OF
A CAPABILITY
We concentrate on capabilities duration, which is aimed
to be maximized and used effectively with respect to gained
prots. We consider on capabilities decreasing as a function
of time due to their usage and sudden losses. The usage is
determined by owners decisions at decisions points and the
unexpected occasions affecting on capability cause sudden
losses. The decisions guiding the use of capability are aimed to
achieve best possible outcome in order to reach ones strategic
goal. However, the using environment of capabilities is often
shared with competing parties using their capabilities which
affect on the prots or may be the reasons for the mentioned
sudden losses. In the long term, the other party may benet
if the capability under interest is decreased and consequently,
it can use its own capabilities in order to benet itself. As a
conclusive result, there can be sudden losses in the considered
capability function.
Usually the owner of the capability encounters several
decision-making situations where it is decided how and how
much of the capability is used in the near future and how
its usage is focused. At each decision-making situation there
are several options of how the capability could be used. The
usage of the capability inuences also to the competitors and
may decrease their capabilities as well. Since the competitor
is affected by the usage of the capability it is less capable on
using its own capabilities against the capability under interest.
82
As a result, a decision made at each decision-making situation
leads to a unique time dependence of the capability.
A. Determining maximum duration of a capability
Let us dene the capability function (over time) as C(t)
and relative to the initial capability (i.e. percentage value). At
the decision points, there are several alternative choices for
capability use in near future. The possible decisions deter-
mine the capability consumption, which can be modeled with
different decreasing functions. Therefore, each decision point
will provide new functions for capability consumption and the
overall situation looks like a tree. By considering capability
consumption through all included decision points, alternative
durations of capability can be observed. We call these function
graphs to capability paths. The different capability paths are
described in the schematic Figure (1).
Fig. 1. Visualizing of the maximal duration of a capability. The alternative
decisions at each decision point leads to a different capability time evolution,
which make branches the capability paths at every decision point.
The maximum duration of a capability is dependent on the
using decisions, environment and competing capabilities. The
duration of the capability at scenario i can be visualized by
capability paths and it can be given by the condition
t
dur,i
= min t > 0[C(t) = 0, (1)
where C(t) is the capability time evolution obtained by i:th
sequence of decisions. The maximum duration T
max
provides
maximum t
dur,i
over the possible capability paths and it can
be given by the following equation
T
max
= max
i
t
dur,i
. (2)
The visualization emphasizes on time dependence and duration
of the capability. However, the analysis of capabilities is
a complex process which should be conducted before the
visualization can be done. The status of the capability is
a function of competitors or other parties (op) capabil-
ity C
op
(t) and even more importantly, a function of their
interaction F(C(t), C
op
(t)). In other words, the tactics or
the strategy (decisions) on using the capability depends also
on competitors capabilities and interactions of capabilities.
Moreover, the interaction may cause unexpected and sudden
changes (decreases) into the capability value. Finally, the time
evolution as well as duration of the capability depends on
several external variables.
Since the capability time evolution curve is not trivial, but
rather complex, all the possible paths should be taken into
account in order to resolve capability time dependency. Also,
the interactions with other capabilities should be identied and
analyzed. In other words, it is claimed that the only possibility
to nd out the capability time dependency is to systematically
(experimentally) go through all the variations in the decision-
making process. The Equation (2) gives a maximum duration
of a capability and corresponding capability path.
The durations of capability are emphasized in the Figure
(1) with the corresponding paths due to sets of decisions.
The maximum duration and the corresponding set of decisions
correspond to the goal of long duration of specic capability.
However, the maximum duration does not necessarily corre-
spond the maximum prots obtained by using the considered
capability.
B. Comparing duration time of the capability to the obtained
prots and the values of remaining capabilities
We have introduced a model of how to nd the tactics
or strategy (sequential decisions) maximizing the duration of
a capability. However, the duration alone does not provide
enough information on the goodness of decisions. In particular,
the results the organization has gained by using its capability
should be considered. In order to proceed, we introduce a
function where the nal states (of remaining capabilities or
prots) are expressed at the moment when the considered
capability vanishes i.e. at the duration time of the capability.
This provides information of values of decisions made along
different paths.
Fig. 2. Resolving the best tactics or strategy. By analysing more carefully
the end state conditions one is able to resolve the best applied strategy. This
gure emphasizes the remainig capability of competitor.
The remaining capabilities may be other own capabilities
or owned by a competitor. A good strategy may then be a
strategy maximizing own prot and minimizing the conicting
83
capabilities at the same time. On the other hand, some of
the remaining capabilities may belong to the same side i.e. to
ourselves or to a party sharing the same interests. Nonetheless,
analyzing the end states of chosen strategies systematically
gives denitely more information of the goodness of different
strategies.
A schematic plot of the values of competiors capabililty of
three different capability paths is shown in the Figure (2). The
paths in the gure show the capability time evolution after the
last decision-making situation, where three possible selections
were available. Corresponding time evolutions of the capability
after the last decision are shown in the gure. Each of the
chosen strategy leads to an end state provided at capabilitys
duration times t
1
, t
2
and t
3
. In this example, a further analysis
reveals how the strategy 3 also minimizes the end state of
the competitors capability. In other words, if the competitor
has conicting interests and represents an opposing side, the
strategy 3 was the most suitable strategy out of these three.
C. Time derivative of a capability for analysis of sudden
changes
Since the capability depends on time and on the other
capabilities as well as on their usage, the experimentally
resolved behavior may be unexpected and complicated. It is
difcult to nd and analyze important occasions if only the
capability curves are viewed as themselves. Human eye or
mind is not a particularly effective tool for observing sudden
changes or determining the steepness of a sudden change and
not comparing the steepness of all curves with each other.
In order to make the analysis more systematic and objective,
one may take a time derivative of the capability function as it
represents changes. The motivation for using time derivative
is to observe sudden changes more easily as well as their
steepness.
Fig. 3. By analyzing the time derivative of a capability one may observe more
effectively interesting time intervals e.g. where the capability vanishes fastest.
Such a reason might be e.g. ending of another capability or resource. One
may then concentrate to study the corresponding time intervals and resolve
the reasons for the sudden changes. In some cases one is able to avoid
sudden changes by removing their cause(s). As an outcome, the duration of a
capability may be extended or more prot can be achieved.
When the time derivative is taken one observes the values
of the sudden changes as peaks (or wells to be more
specic). The value of the bottom of the well tells directly
the steepness of the curve and therefore, the answer of a
question how fast the capability then decreases?. As a direct
application, one may set alarm-values giving an alarm of
a sudden change. The time derivative helps to nd those
particular time intervals for trying to resolve the leading
cause(s) for the sudden change(s). For example, the sudden
drop may occur at the instant vicinity of a vanishment of
another capability or a resource. After resolving the leading
cause one may analyze if the cause (e.g. vanishment of a
resource) may be delayed. As a result, with the time derivative,
one has better changes on delaying the vanishment (improving
the duration) of a capability under interest.
In the Figure (3) there is a schematic example of an
analysis of a capability curve. There are three sudden drops in
the capability curve and they are seen as wells in the time
derivative curve. After analyzing the surroundings of time
t
1
, t
2
and t
3
one may resolve the leading cause for the sudden
changes. If one is able to delay the cause of one or more of the
sudden drops one may be able to delay the total vanishment
of the capability by t.
III. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION
We have considered sequential decision making process
for understanding and visualizing the value of capability due
to the decisions. We have introduced a model for comparing
differential sequential decisions in terms of capability values
in the presence of competing capabilities and using principles.
The model can be applied for presenting duration of capability
as well as analysis of prots obtained in the capability use. We
called the strategies forming the decisions to capability paths
as their graph visualize the values of capability with respect
to time. In that manner, our model can be used to compare
different tactics or strategies, i.e. path of decisions, and to nd
out which path leads to maximum duration of a capability. The
time dependency of a capability is a very complex function
and depends at least time, other capabilities, and capabilities
interactions.
Since the capability is used in order to achieve prots or
strategic goals, the capability should not vanish at too early
stage. By analyzing the decision points (and the corresponding
paths) of capability usage one is able to resolve the strategy
leading to the maximum duration. The strategy or decisions
leading to the maximum duration of the capability provides
information of how long the capability can be available.
However, the prots that the organization achieves in using
the capability may be more interesting at least together within
the information of capability duration.
This was further studied by introducing a procedure for
analyzing the prots and remaining capabilities at the time in-
stants where considered capability vanishes i.e. at the duration
times corresponding to different strategies. In short, a mapping
from duration times to the prots and remaining capability
values. If the strategy leading to the longest duration of a
capability leads also to the most prot or less capability of the
competitor (and/or more capability of the other own capabili-
ties), it is a strong indication of the chosen strategy being the
84
most suitable one. Finally, we proposed to use time derivative
of the capability function for more careful analysis of the
duration of a capability. The fastest changes (decreases) in
capability can be easily observed by time derivative minimum
values and more careful study within surrounding intervals of
minimum derivative values may be useful in nding out the
leading reason(s) for the sudden drops. If the reason(s) can
be identied, reduced, delayed or even removed, the duration
of the considered capability may be improved by delaying the
vanishment.
In applying our ndings it is challenging to determine
time evolution curves after decisions. However, there exists
cases where capability decreases according to known rules.
For instance in manufacturing, capability can be understood in
terms of existing resources and the decision of the capability
usage would concern on the capacity utilization. In that case,
the visualization would emphasize e.g. the duration of the
processed material.
The introduced model deals with capabilies duration in
competitive environment. As the model is schematic, further
studies can be conducted with respect to presented ideas.
In particular, the question of capabilities usage and obtained
prot would improve the understanding causal relations of own
decisions.
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and S. Winter, Dynamic Capabilities: Understanding Strategic Change
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no. 1, pp. 91102, 2011.
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2007.
85
Utilizing sensitivity analysis and data filtering
processes to support overall optimizing and decision
making models in military tactics

Jari Sormunen, Lt.Col.
National Defence University,
Finnish Defence Forces, Santahamina
Finland
Harri Eskelinen, D.Sc
PL 20, 53850 Lappeenranta
Finland
harri.eskelinen@lut.fi

Abstract The goal of this research is to produce new
information for developing the models of operational analysis
and battle simulation applications used in Finnish Defence
Forces. System models of military tactics are tools used to
describe and study the relationships, contexts and effects of
qualitative and abstract aspects. Operational research is utilized
in the designing of mathematical optimizing models to find
solutions for decision making in military tactics. Sensitivity
analysis is applied to clarify 1) how the changes of the initial data
collected from the battlefield affect the results of the
mathematical analyzing method or of the simulating model of
tactics, and 2) how these results later affect the leaders decision
making. Two practical cases are discussed. The first example
discusses the sensitivity aspects of stochastic modeling, and the
second example describes the importance of sensitivity analysis of
data collection during field exercises. In addition to sensitivity
analysis, it is necessary to find a method for guaranteeing the
content, quality and relevance of the observations collected from
the battlefield. These three elements play a key role in the overall
optimizing model. In addition, this paper also describes
specialized filtering processes for filtering the data and
observations from the battlefield and for making it possible for
one to appropriately quantify observations for the optimizing
procedure.
Keywordsoperational analysis; military tactics; sensitivity
analysis; data filtering; optimizing; decision making
I. INTRODUCTION
In this paper, sensitivity aspects and optimizing viewpoints
of the analysis model for tactical phenomena are discussed.
This research is based on co-operation between Finnish
Defence Forces and Lappeenranta University of technology
from 2007 to 2012. The background research was carried out
from 2003 to 2007, during which time 59 attack exercises were
analyzed. The results of the background research are reported
by Sormunen and Eskelinen in [1] and by Eskelinen and
Sormunen in [2].
The main goal of this research is to produce new
information and data for developing both models of operational
analysis and battle simulation applications used in Finnish
Defence Forces.
To reach this goal, this research clarifies how the tactical
aspects examined affect the outcome of the attack exercise,
from the viewpoint of unit performance optimization. The
studied variables were divided into the following five main
categories: tactics, situational awareness, loading, human
factors and background aspects [2].
Our secondary goal is to develop methods for tactical
analysis that make it possible to construct an exhaustive
optimizing model for tactical decision making. The following
questions were taken into consideration [2]:
- How does one measure and observe the tactical variables
and other aspects, and what are the appropriate gauges?
- How does one analyze the effects related to battle
outcome?
- How does one integrate qualitative and quantitative
aspects to support tactical decision making and overall
optimizing of the use of unit performance?
- How does one illustrate and interpret the results of the
overall optimizing procedure?
II. SELECTED METHODOLOGY
There are several scientific approaches which could be
applied to produce an exhaustive tactical overall optimizing
model. One classic way of illustrating the functionality of
different types of systems is the application of differential
equations. In military tactics, differential equations could, for
example, be used to illustrate the balance of dynamics between
two fighting sides or to present the recovering process of the
unit after evacuation actions because of the various casualty
ratios involved. However, the system models could also be
based on information theory, cybernetics, game theory,
decision making theories, networking theories, stochastic
models and operational research.
For the purposes of this paper, system models of military
tactics are regarded as tools for describing and studying
relationships, contexts and effects of qualitative and abstract
aspects. On the other hand, operational research is utilized for
designing mathematical optimizing models to find the best
86
possible decision-making solutions in military tactics
[Eskelinen and Karsikas, 3, p. 153].
The authors of this paper wish to emphasize the viewpoint
that system theory may be regarded as a tool for understanding
and illustrating the different functional parts of a system and
how these different parts work together [Mielonen, 4]. The
main point, however, is not to divide the system into its
discrete parts, but rather to try to understand how the parts
affect the unity of the system. Therefore, in this research, all
the tactical aspects of the military unit (an infantry company)
are discussed simultaneously, and the relationships and
interactions thereof are studied as a whole. Finally, in this
research, the focus is on the integrated overall result of tactical
analysis, which is based on both the analytical approaches and
system theory. This means that at times the discussion in this
paper deals chiefly with the overlapping boundary areas of
system theory and operational research.
III. IMPORTANCE OF SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS TO SUPPORT
TACTICAL DECISION MAKING
Sensitivity analysis is applied to clarify 1) how possible
changes in the initial data collected from the battlefield affect
the results of either the mathematical analyzing or simulating
model of tactics, and 2) how these results later affect the
leaders decision making. Therefore, the principal model of
sensitivity analysis consists of three main parts: sensitivity of
the initial data collection, sensitivity of the mathematical
analyzing method or simulation model, and sensitivity of
decision making (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Main parts of sensitivity analysis.
It is important to recognize, as illustrated in Fig. 1 by the
two-way arrows, that the main parts of sensitivity interact with
each other [3]. This means that on the one hand, the sensitivity
aspect of decision making guides the initial data collection; on
the other hand, the mathematical model forms the justification
for the decision making. There are thus several tools used to
estimate that enough data has been collected from the
battlefield and that the accuracy of that data is high enough. In
the analyzing and simulation models, there might be some
uncertainty or instability, e.g. when one applies different
distribution curve fits for forecasting the outcome of the battle.
The model might yield wrong answers even though the initial
data has been correctly collected. This is also the turning point
of the sensitivity analysis. If the mathematical model produces
distorted results, then the decision making is misled, too. The
feedback from decision making towards the mathematical
models and initial data collection is needed to avoid
unnecessary work if only general guidelines are expected as the
result of decision making in lieu of an in-depth analysis of the
aspects inside the decision making process. Rough decision
making only requires tentative data collection and perhaps a
simple distribution analysis based on assumed normal
distribution variables.
Modern tactical simulations and mathematical analysis are
based on stochastic modeling, which increases the importance
of the appropriate sensitivity analysis [3]. This means that the
models utilizing probabilistic analysis or randomized variables
might turn into merely subjective war game models instead of
scientific models used to estimate battle outcome. This will
occur if the conditional clauses within the mathematical models
utilize assumptions based on inaccurate sensitivity analysis.
Indeed, this would approach manipulation of the results! Only
careful sensitivity analysis ensures that the advanced
mathematical models for supporting tactical decision making
work properly.
Both quantitative and qualitative data are utilized in tactical
research to form an overall picture of tactical phenomena from
the battlefield. Sensitivity analysis of qualitative analysis is
even more challenging than the previously described three-part
method of quantitative analysis. The key to handling the
problem is to ascertain the saturation limit, which describes
when enough qualitative data has been collected. This basically
means that the saturation point has been reached [3] when new
qualitative data does not contribute anything additional to the
explanation of the tactical phenomenon under research.
However, it is important to remember that in qualitative
analysis, we are not looking for the justification to generalize
the results in a statistical sense.
Let us next discuss two practical cases where sensitivity
analysis has played a key role in ensuring the quality of the
research results in military tactics. The first example discusses
the sensitivity aspects of stochastic modeling, and the second
example describes the importance of sensitivity analysis of data
collection during an attack field exercise.
A. Case 1: Sensitivity analysis and stochastic models
Some recent computational models for combat simulations
used in Finnish Defence Forces are presented by Esa Lappi in
[5 p. 14]. One goal of these studies has been to create tools for
the optimization of the use of combat resources [5 p. 14]. The
main aim of Lappis study was to create methods for combat
simulation tools for brigade-level land warfare scenarios. This
work combines methods of mathematical modeling, stochastic
processes and probabilistic risk analysis, all applied to battle
simulation models suited to the Finnish combat environment.
The results are needed for military planning, acquisition
processes and cost-effectiveness calculations [5 p. 14].
Therefore, we can use the simulation model presented by Lappi
as a case example for evaluating the importance of sensitivity
analysis.
One section of the simulation model describes the
evacuation process of a wounded soldier at the platoon level. In
this part of the simulation model, the operator provides the
average evacuation time and the standard deviation for the
87
connection. The phenomenon can be represented as a Markov
chain, whereby the patients move from one state to the next
through the evacuation chain. This contains both the state
transitions for treatment and the state changes without
treatment. Given the average time and the standard deviation
of the time, the number of states can be calculated as N =
(/)
2
. However, the number of states is set to be at least 2 and
at most / [Lappi et al 6].
Several measurements have been performed to validate this
model, some of which are discussed in detail by Lappi et al in
[7]. Part of the experiment was recreated in Sandis software,
which produced very similar results. During the tests, the
casualty rate was determined to be 35.4%, while the Sandis
software result was 37%. If the probability of a hit is 35% with
100 targets, the standard deviation = (npq)
1/2
5, so 355%
is the ideal accuracy for the hit probability in a single test [7].
But what happens when the expected distribution does not
follow normal distribution function is that the given estimation
of the evacuation process might be totally misleading.
B. CASE 2: Sensitivity analysis and field exercises
Our second case example focuses on evaluating the
importance of the sensitivity analysis conducted for data
collection of a soldiers feeling of having the initiative during
an attack exercise. In the literature dealing with tactics
[Rekkedahl, 8, p. 79-80], in the Finnish Defence Forces
regulations and field manuals [9] and in recent tactical research
[Huttunen, 10, p.125-128], initiative is regarded to have an
essential impact on the success of a battle. In addition to these
findings from the literature, General Tynkkynen, for example,
also asks, should the execution model of the areal defence be
changed because based on his viewpoint Finland needs an
execution model that is more initiative than the one at present
[Tynkkynen, 11, p. 92]. The literature research shows [2] that
the most significant differences between successful and
unsuccessful attacks are the ability to deal with the following
aspects based on company leaders answers in field exercises:
- Initiative
- Adversarys ability to effect
- Physical task load
- Timely task load
- Mental task load
The human factors seem to be important for the success. In
the background research, soldiers feelings of having initiative
were measured by questionnaires and interviews. The results
showed that the distributions of the results, which presented the
soldiers on both fighting sides having feelings of initiative,
partly overlapped [12]. It is therefore interesting to research
whether the quantified results from the qualitative analysis of
the background research support this finding of overlapping
distributions and what new aspects sensitivity and distribution
analyses could bring to the discussion.
The practical measurement system is developed in NASA-
TLX-research as described by Sandra et al in [13, p. 139-184].
NASA has utilized the same type of measurement and data
collection system for its astronauts to find out how to maintain
astronaut performance in a weightless environment. The
analogous similarity to the battlefield environment stems from
the fact that in the battlefield also, the question is how to
maintain human performance in an environment which departs
from the normal. In principle, this type of measurement and
data collection system also works in the battle exercise if the
soldiers evaluate their own feelings [Hrknen et al, 14]. In the
background research, the soldiers of both fighting sides
(distinguished here as blue or red side) were asked to evaluate
their own feeling of having the initiative at each measurement
level of an attack, by marking the point on a 100 millimeter-
long line indicating the strength of their feeling (see Fig. 2).
With this form of measurement, quantified data was collected
in a continuous range. This way of producing quantified and
scaled data made it possible to carry out the mathematical
analysis dealing with the feeling of having the initiative.

Fig. 2. Measuring and quantifying the data dealing with the soldiers feeling
of having initiative.
To verify the hypotheses, it is necessary to establish which
fighting side has the initiative at each moment of the attack and
how strong the initiative is. This is done by calculating the size
of the overlapping area of the two distributions describing the
variation of ones own forces feeling and the adversarys
feeling of having the initiative. The probability that both sides
feel they have the initiative is calculated. The distribution
analyses dealing with the feeling of having the initiative are
carried out in the stepwise analysis illustrated in Fig. 3.
Firstly, mean values (
b
-
r
) and standard deviations (
b
,
r
)
of feeling of having initiative at each measurement level are
calculated for both fighting sides. Secondly, the size of the
overlapping area may be roughly estimated e.g. by applying the
calculated nomogram [Linacre, 15, p. 487-488]. Thirdly, after
the previous nomogram has revealed the overlapping areas, the
probability of the different opinions between the blue and red
side of having the initiative is calculated by the equation (1).

2 2
s b
r b
p
z
V V
P P

(1)
where
z
p
= Normal distribution coefficient
b
= Mean value (own side)
r
= Mean value (adversary side)
b
= Standard deviation (own side)
r
= Standard deviation (adversary side).
The dependency of having the initiative on the fulfillment
of the battle task and on the number of suffered casualties is
defined by establishing the probability values of the initiative
and the corresponding casualty ratio at each measurement
level
88

Fig. 3. Stepwise distribution analysis dealing with the feeling of having
initiative.
The next step is to calculate if the advantageous initiative
indicates a positive progress of the casualty ratio with a high
correlation. What would happen if the distributions do not
follow the normal distribution curve is that the tactical
assumptions would be misleading.
These two cases demonstrate that an overall optimizing
model for evaluating military tactics with probabilities should
be developed to also recognize the distributions which do not
follow the expected normal distribution curve accurately
enough. Kapur [16] has presented either derived equations or
readily calculated resulting tables for analyzing situations,
whereas sensitivity analysis requires the calculation of the
overlapping area of two normal distributions, two log-normal
distributions, two Poissons distributions, normal and Poisson-
distribution, two Gamma-distributions, normal and Weibull
distribution and two Weibull distributions.
Weibull distribution is mathematically quite flexible,
because its curve can be fitted satisfactorily to follow the
various types of results. Therefore, it is interesting to see if it
could be the solution for both previous case examples for
improving the sensitivity of the tactical analysis. In [16] there
are numerical values in the tables which can be used to solve
the probability of the area where the normal distribution
overlaps with the Weibull distribution (see Fig. 4).

Fig. 4. Overlapping area of normal and Weibull distribution.
If the parameters and of the Weibull distribution and the
parameters
s
and
s
of the normal distribution are known, and
if these distributions overlap, two relationships can be written
[Kapur and Lamberson, 11] as shown in (2) and (3):

s
C
V
K O
(2)

s
s
A
V
P K
(3)

By substituting here the values of the cutting and scaling
parameters of the Weibull distribution and the ratios calculated
from the mean values and standard deviations, it is possible to
solve the values of coefficients A and C expressed in (2) and
(3) and, furthermore, to read the probability of the overlapping
area by utilizing the calculated tables [16]. It is likely that when
one analyzes the battle exercises (in the form of data sets
describing some tactical aspects of both fighting sides), the
distributions of some variables may not follow normal
89
distributions [3, p- 123-127]. To be able to forecast the battle
outcome, the use of the Weibull distribution described here
would be justified.
According to our results, it is possible to utilize the NASA-
TLX index to try to quantify the differences between the
emotional or human factors between the fighting sides, such as
the feeling of having initiative, but it is possible that these
human factors indicate the outcome of the battle incorrectly. In
some cases, the leaders positive feeling of having the initiative
might have been based on e.g. misleading situational awareness
or unexpected changes of the tactical situation, and then, during
the battle that positive feeling has collapsed. However, it is
possible that due to some other successful factors the leader is
still able to lead his unit to victory. Although the effort to try to
quantify the feeling of having the initiative might give some
new information from the battle field, it should be noticed that
the task is at least challenging and special attention is needed to
verify the effects.
IV. DATA FILTERING FROM BATTLEFIELD TO CONSTRUCT
THE OVERALL OPTIMIZING MODEL
In addition to sensitivity analysis, finding a method to
guarantee the content, quality and relevance of the observations
collected from the battlefield is necessary. These three
elements play a key role in the overall optimizing model (see
Fig. 5). In this research, we describe the specialized filtering
process utilized to filter the data and observations from the
battlefield, to make it possible to quantify these appropriately
for the optimizing procedure.

Fig. 5. Basic elements of the overall optimizing model.
The development and the justifications of the data filtering
processes is based on the material, which was collected in the
background research and which is documented by Finnish
Defence Forces (FDF). This material consists of the result
database [17, p. 1-2] including results of 59 attack exercises,
tactical maps and event catalogues of these attacks and 103
written reports from data collectors (professional officers on
duty at FDF). The filtering processes are used to organize and
handle the data sets of 118 measured variables and 130
observed factors during each attack. [18] The data included
11912 recorded fighter attack actions, which were collected
during 34 measurement days.
The filtering process is carried out by applying five
different analyses: result-dependent, battle space-impulse,
time-dependent, decision making-oriented, and sequential
effect-chain analysis. In result-dependent analysis, the value of
each observation is derived into a numerical value according to
the result of the required action. In battle space-impulse
analysis, if the attack is successful, different impulses lead to
initiative, dynamic, creative and dominant functions instead of
to post-reactive corrections affecting the values of entered
numerical data. When time-dependent analysis is carried out,
phenomena are observed based on two time variants, which
affect the entered data values. Decision making-oriented
analysis handles the data pertaining to the leaders decision
making and his tactical solutions. Within the sequential effect-
chain analysis, tactical analysis is employed in an attempt to
find the most important connections between different tactical
aspects.
The aim of the overall optimizing procedure is to integrate
several different variables and affecting factors into one tactical
overall model 1) according to the company leaders decisions,
solutions, and orders; 2) according to the units actions; and 3)
according to the events in the battle space. Special filtering
processes are needed to derive mostly quantitative observations
into numerical values describing tactical phenomena.
The filtering processes are divided into the following five
sub-analyses categories in order of importance:
- Result-dependent analysis
- Battle space-impulse analysis
- Time-dependent analysis
- Decision making-oriented analysis
- Sequential effect-chain analysis.
The most important sub-analysis is thus result-dependent
analysis. A simplified chart of this analysis is presented in Fig.
6. The flexibility between decision making and the desired
successful course of action is highlighted.

Fig. 6. In the result dependent analysis the quantity is determined by the
result of the selected action. However, flexibility in the evaluation of
interaction between decision and action is allowed.
The second most important filtering principle in data
collection is battle space-impulse analysis. This highlights the
aspect that any impulse at any time during the battle should
lead to initiative, dynamic, creative and dominant functions in
the company for dealing with the current situation and for
winning the battle or for supporting battle success (see Fig. 7).
It is important to acknowledge that this analysis is related
neither to theoretical time-axes nor to the principal distance-
axes of the infantry companys attack. In this analysis, the
observations are made by examining changes in the companys
functions in accordance with each event in the battle space.

90

Fig. 7. The Battlespace impulse analysis. In a successful attack, impulses
should lead to initiative, dynamic, creative and dominant functions instead of
post-reactive corrections.
The third most important filtering process is time-
dependent analysis. In the principal progression of an attack
exercise, the time boundaries are variable, but the time axes of
a real attack are, of course, continuous. This is illustrated in
Fig. 8. Time measurement starts from readiness and ends with
continuity. In addition to this, observations are made in the
three-dimensional coordination of effect, decision and time.
This addition makes it possible to quantify the speed of each
effect and decision and relate these to the outcome-dominated
overall tactical evaluation. Furthermore, this enables one to
calculate the time needed to reach the maximum speed of the
selected course of actions (acceleration).

Fig. 8. The time dependent analysis.
Fourth in order of importance, decision making-oriented
analysis follows the model of the data-flow process, which is
time dependent. In this case, the input of the process consists of
affecting variables and background factors which integrate
with information connected to situational awareness. The
human decision making process itself is not essential, but of
main interest is the discovery of the connections between the
decisions made, the presumable results and the time required
for the tactical decision making.
The decision making process is seen as initiative,
concurrent and active action. The leaders and soldiers own
active and personal situation evaluation influences the essential
factor in this case.
The output of this process model yields knowledge that has
already been analyzed of the responses and effects due to the
decisions made. Furthermore, the result of the process is
summarized and observed in the companys tactical solutions
and actions connected to the leaders decisions. This process
model is illustrated in Fig. 9.
On the one hand, any action in most organizations starts
with a command given by the boss, which is assumed to lead to
a desired effect through maneuvers by staff. Every modern
organization strives to maintain its performance as well. On the
other hand, the established cornerstones of decision making are
background knowledge, activeness, simplicity, concentration of
effort and backdoor thinking. In our research, these two
viewpoints are modified for the tactical analysis of an infantry
companys attack. The viewpoints form the basic chains within
the sequential effect-chain analysis.

Fig. 9. Process model of the decision making oriented analysis.
The development of both time-dependent analysis and
decision making-oriented analysis originate from ideas of
applying principles dealing with experiencing time in leading
systems as noted by Kuusisto and Helokunnas [19, p. 415-419].
According to these principles, the aim should be remembered
when one studies time in the context of leading situations.
When these principles are applied to the area of tactical
analysis, another important viewpoint deals with how to
combine the theories of time with three types of information,
which are 1) information about the past, 2) perceptions about
the current moment and 3) intuition about the future [Kuusisto
and Kuusisto, 20, p. 78-81]. The cubic model in Fig. 9 shows
how this viewpoint has been applied in decision making-
oriented analysis.
In sequential effect-chain analysis, specific tactical
variables establish the key chain connection with respect to the
battle outcome. It is possible for one to analyze and predict the
success of a tactical decision and the action connected to it
even if using only the key chains. In these cases, the linkages
between the tactical variables are in a central position. One
typical key chain consists of three tactical variables: 1) freedom
of action, 2) execution capability and 3) utilization of success.
91
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Stepwise sensitivity analysis plays a key role in the
construction of the overall optimizing model of tactical
analysis. What is likely easiest to accept is the need for an
appropriate curve fitting the distribution of measured variables
from the battlefield. It is too often and too easily assumed that
normal distributions of measured tactical variables are accurate
enough to be included in the mathematical (e.g. stochastic)
models to form the basis for estimating or forecasting the
outcome of a battle. Our results have shown that if the
appropriate distribution function is found, the reliability of the
optimizing model can be improved without any other essential
changes made to the overall model.
The most important result of this research is the
development of filtering processes for handling the qualitative
observations from the battlefield and for forming the basis for
qualifying them for use in the mathematical optimizing models.
The conclusions that are drawn from the five sub-analyses
processes presented in this paper could be summarized as
follows. The purpose of result-dependent analysis is to verify if
the battle task has been fulfilled. Battle space-impulse analysis
confirms whether the course of the battle was victorious or not.
The point of time-dependent analysis is to check the success of
the battle timing. The decision making-oriented analysis
confirms the justification of the main decisions made relevant
to the battle situation. The sequential effect-chain analysis
indicates and ascertains the key tactical variables and the
importance of these in the battle.
Finally, as a concrete tactical result taken from the filtering
process conclusions, it is possible to extract and call attention
to certain tactical key points of the battle:
- Was the battle task fulfilled and was the battle victorious?
- At what cost was the outcome of the battle achieved?
- Was the timing related to the tactical decisions and
tactical actions correct?
- Were the decisions and tactical actions actively justified
or merely conducted like before?
- What are the key variables and the culmination points of
the attack?
By way of conclusion, one way of illustrating the results of
the tactical overall optimizing procedure is to utilize a surface
model (see Fig. 10).The set of coordinates is formed of the
tactical principles and tactical elements, and of the
corresponding quantified values of the tactical observations
dealing with those principles and elements. The sequences of
the rows and columns inside the CMEP-matrix, were
established by utilizing the field manuals, regulations and other
relevant literature. Further on, the final construction of the
model presented in Fig. 10 is bases the qualitative analysis
according to Miles and Huberman [21, p. 10-12], during which
about 12,000 observations from the background research were
analyzed. These observations were produced by professional
officers of the Finnish Defence Forces. In the Finnish Defence
Forces Field Manual, the central tactical principles are
described with the word, consciously, actively, simply,
concentrated and continuously. According to the field manual
the company leader leans on these general tactical principles
when he is leading the battle and the compliance with these
principles makes it possible to succeed in the battle. According
to the Field Manual the tactical elements are command and
control, manoeuvre, effect and performance maintenance. The
tactical principles become apparent in the interaction with the
tactical elements of the battle [9].
These kinds of surfaces are generated by applying
measured data into a Bezir-surface, which makes it possible to
add mathematical comparison and pattern recognition to the
decision making process. As illustrated by the different colored
layers in Fig. 10, different types of coefficients are easy to add
for purposes of adjusting the height of the surface for example
to describe the difficulty level of the tactical task or to scale
the final grading of the measured attack.

Fig. 10. Surface illustration of the tactical overall optimizing procedure.
Both during the background research and during the
ongoing research at Finnish Defence Forces and Lappeenranta
University of Technology it has been seen that there are
different types of uncertainties in the battlefield, which should
be recognized. In this paper only one type of uncertaintity has
been examined in details. This paper has dealt mostly with the
possibilities of utilizing appropriate distribution types to
support tactical analysis and sensitivity aspects connected with
that. However, uncertainties related to battle simulations can be
divided into different groups, such as variability, precision,
ignorance or vagueness. First kind of uncertainty (variability) is
typically found with the data which deals with the so-called
human factors (like soldiers feeling of having initiative
discussed in this paper).
It is also noticeable, that the equal values or magnitudes of
collected data do not necessarily show identical states
(precision). On the other hand, the sensitivity is connected with
the establishment of the appropriate reference level of the
precision. However, this level depends also on the
environmental aspects including the effects of observers own
presence in the test set up and therefore the level is difficult to
set at any exact height.
When the observer collects data from the battlefield, we
must remember and recognize the problem of ignorance: The
observer may suffer from the lack of required knowledge to
92
analyze the situation, he might just collect his beliefs of what
has happened instead of real observations or in some cases
he might even ignore some important evidence.
Vagueness describes the observation itself. The complex
situation at the battlefield causes the problem that some
observations might be unclear or uncountable.
Because we know, how complex the tactical analysis might
be and, yet, clear decisions are needed to carry out the
appropriate military manoeuvres, it is reasonable to utilize
different types of tools to increase the reliability, validity and
effectiveness of the tactical analysis. One option is to utilize
sensitivity analysis and developed data filtering processes to
support the overall optimizing and decision making models in
military tactics.
REFERENCES

[1] J.Sormunen J. and H.Eskelinen, Mitattua taktiikkaa Komppanian
hykkyksen menestystekijt, Edita Prima Oy, Helsinki, 2010.
[2] H. Eskelinen and J.Sormunen, Kvantitatiiviset ja kvalitatiiviset
tutkimusmetodit komppanian taisteluharjoituksen analysoinnissa,
Tutkimusraportti 88, LUT,Teknillinen tiedekunta, Lappeenranta 2012.
[3] H.Eskelinen and S.Karsikas, Tutkimusmetodiikan perusteet - Tekniikan
alan oppikirja, LUT Koulutus- ja kehittmiskeskus, Julkaisu 12,
Lappeenranta 2012.
[4] S.Mielonen, Systeemiajattelu,
http://www.mlab.uiah.fi/polut/Yhteiskunnalliset/tyokalu_systeemiajattel
u.html, down loaded 30.7.2010.
[5] E. Lappi, Computational methods for tactical simulations,
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Helsinki 2012.
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through Field Tests, 2nd Nordic Military Analysis Symposium,
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muutoksessa, Maanpuolustuskorkeakoulu, Taktiikan laitos, 2006.
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OHJE) and Komppanian taisteluohje (KOTO), Finnish Defence Forces,
2008.
[10] M.Huttunen, Monimutkainen taktiikka, MPKK, 2010.
[11] V.Tynkkynen, Taktisen ajattelun haasteet Katoaako oma-
leimaisuutemme, Sotataidon jljill Taktinen ja viestitaktinen taito
taistelukentll, MPKK, 2004.
[12] National Defence University of Finland, MPKK AF15339,
Jakaumatarkastelut, Finnish Defence Forces, 2009.
[13] G.Sandra, G and L.Staveland,Development of NASA-TLX (Task Load
Index): Results of Empirical and Theoretical Research, Human Mental
Workload, Advances in Psychology 52, pp. 139-184, 1988.
[14] T.Hrknen, M.Vulli, H.Eskelinen and L.Oksama, The Effect of
Infantry Simulator Training on Combat Performance, 54th IMTA
Conference, Dubrovnik, CROATIA,5.-9.11.2012.
[15] J.Linacre, Overlapping Normal Distributions, Rasch Measurement
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[16] K.Kapur and, L.Lamberson, Reliability in Engineering Design, John
Wiley&Sons Inc., USA 1977.
[17] PEMAAVOS R6524: Komppanian hykkyksen menestystekijt,
toimeksianto, Finnish Defence Forces, 2003.
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esitys jatkotoimista, Finnish Defence Forces, 2007.
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Edition, Sage Publications, USA, 1994.

93
A First Approach to the Optimization of Bogot as
TransMilenio BRT System
Francisco J. Pe na, Antonio Jim enez and Alfonso Mateos
Decision Analysis and Statistics Group (DASG)
Departamento de Inteligencia Articial, Universidad Polit ecnica de Madrid
Campus de Montegancedo S/N, Boadilla del Monte, 28660, Madrid, SPAIN
Email: francisco.pena.escobar@alumnos.upm.es, ajimenez, amateos@.upm.es
http://www.dia..upm.es/grupos/dasg/index.htm
AbstractBus rapid transit (BRT) systems are massive trans-
port systems with medium/high capacity, high quality service and
low infrastructure and operating costs. TransMilenio is Bogot as
most important mass transportation system and one of the biggest
BRT systems in the world, although it only has completed its
third construction phase out of a total of eight. In this paper we
review the proposals in the literature to optimize BRT system
operation, with a special emphasis on TransMilenio, and propose
a mathematical model that adapts elements of the above proposals
and incorporates novel elements accounting for the features of
TransMilenio system.
KeywordsBus rapid transit systems, optimization, mathe-
matical modeling.
I. INTRODUCTION
Bus rapid transit (BRT) systems are public transport sys-
tems with medium/high capacity, high quality service and low
infrastructure and operating costs ([1]). They are considered to
be a good affordable alternative for developing cities seeking
to provide their citizens with a high-quality possible self-
sustaining public transport alternative comparable with rail
systems, but without the high costs and without taking cities
to high levels of debt, leaving the possibility of investing the
city funds in priority areas such as health or education.
BRT systems have a lot in common with rail systems,
particularly performance and passenger service. The main
difference is that operation and implementation costs are 4
to 20 times lower than the costs of a light rail system, and 10
to 100 times lower compared to a heavy rail and metro system
([1]).
They can operate of limited stop services (also called stop-
skipping services), in which a bus service omits stops along
certain routes. This has great advantages, such as the reduction
of travel times due to fewer stops and the reduction of operator
costs because they can meet the demand with fewer vehicles
thanks to shorter bus cycles ([2]).
BRT systems are now operating in 149 cities, most of
which have been built since 2000, and 84 more are planned
around the world. TransMilenio is Bogot as most important
public transportation system and one of the biggest BRT
systems in the world. New plans have been made to expand it
due to its success, and similar systems have been constructed
in other cities of Colombia.
There are very few proposals in the literature focused on
optimizing the BRT system operation, mainly because they are
relatively recent phenomena, and many of the currently operat-
ing BRT systems are far from reaching maximum capacity. To
the best of our knowledge, there are not automatic proposals
for route design. The closest to this is the model proposed in
[2]) that evaluates and selects the best several routes.
In this paper we review of the proposals in the literature
to optimize BRT system operation, with a special emphasis
on TransMilenio, and propose a mathematical model that
adapts elements of the above proposals and incorporates novel
elements accounting for the features of TransMilenio system.
Specically, we introduce a new model for evaluating Trans-
Milenio BRT system routes, given the trip demand in the form
of an origin-destination matrix.
Section 2 introduces BRT systems and their main elements.
Section 3 focuses on the TransMilenio system, Bogot as most
important public transportation system and one of the biggest
BRT systems in the world. In Section 4, we review the
different studies in the literature on the optimization of BRT
systems and, specically, on the TransMilenio system. In
Section 5, we introduce a new mathematical model approach
to the optimization of the TransMilenio system. Finally, some
conclusions and future research are discussed in Section 6.
II. BUS RAPID TRANSIT SYSTEMS
A BRT system was dened in [1] as a system based
on high quality buses, that provide fast and a comfortable
urban mobility and with a favourable cost-benet through the
provision of segregated infrastructure of exclusive use, fast and
frequent operations, and marketing and customer/user service
excellence.
The rst BRT system started operating in Curitiba in
1974, but until the decade of 1990 this type of system was
seen as a public transportation system for small cities or as
complementary systems of a metro network. Many experts
considered that these systems were not able to reach a capacity
beyond 12000 passengers per hour per direction (pphpd). This
perception radically changed in 2000 with the creation of
TransMilenio in the city of Bogot a (Colombia). Nowadays,
TransMilenio transports nearly 500 million people yearly ([3]).
It introduced a series of improvements that raised the capacity
of BRT systems enormously to 45000 pphpd, and has inspired
94
evolution of the # of cities and km per decade
Total length
Before 1990 (14 cities)
1990s (19 cities)
Since 2000 (116 cities)
493 km
905 km
3876 km
BRT and busway systems in the world
source: BRTdata.org, January, 2013
Fig. 1. Evolution of number BRT of cities and km per decade ([4])
many cities around the world to implement this type of systems
([1]).
Nowadays, there are 149 cities with BRT systems, and
84 more are planned. The majority of systems were built
after the year 2000, which can be attributed to TransMilenios
success, as illustrated in Figure 1, which shows the evolution
in the number of cities with BRT systems per decade and the
respective number of kilometers.
A. Comparison with other mass transportation systems
Table I shows the price range for mass transportation
systems based on a comparison of infrastructure costs real data
([1] ).
Type of system
Cost per
kilometer
(US$ million/km)
BRT 0.5 - 15
Tram and light rail transit 13 - 40
Elevated systems 40 - 100
Underground metro 45 - 350
TABLE I. CAPITAL COSTS FOR DIFFERENT MASS TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEMS
The infrastructure costs for BRT systems are clearly sig-
nicantly lower than for any other rail-based transportation
system. The city of Bangkok is a case in point. This city has
an elevated rail system (SkyTrain) and an underground metro
system (MRTA), a proposed BRT system (Smartway) and a
proposed light rail train. The real costs per kilometer of the
metro systems and elevated train were US$ 142.9 million and
US$ 72.5 million. The projected costs per kilometer for the
proposed light rail and BRT are US$ 25 million and US$ 2.34
million. This means that with a budget of US$ 1000 million
they could build 7 km of underground train, 14 km of elevated
train, 40 km of light rail train or 426 km of BRT system ([1]).
Unlike rail systems around the world, BRT systems are
capable of operating without government subsidies. As a
matter of fact, they are protable, which is the reason why
many governments delegate the operation to private companies.
This is a great advantage, especially useful for developing
cities, where governments have tight budgets and there is
nothing better than a self-sustaining mass transportation system
thanks to which they can invest resources in other areas such
as sewerage, education and health.
BRT systems can be planned and implemented in short
time periods, which can be covered in one government term.
The two most successful and complete BRT systems (Curitiba
and Bogot a) were planned and implemented in a three year
span.
Formerly it was thought that bus based services could
operate within a range up to 6000 pphpd. If the demand
was higher, a light rail based system should be considered,
with capacity between 6000 and 12000 pphpd. A heavy metro
system had to be considered for a higher demand, since its
capacity ranges from 25000 to 80000 pphpd.
The arrival of BRT systems with a capacity range from
3000 to 45000 pphpd changed the situation. BRT systems
turned into a real mass transportation alternative for big cities,
and the myth that says that BRT system cannot compete with
metro systems in terms of capacity was broken. As a matter of
fact, it is not necessarily true that big cities need overowing
levels of capacity, an example is the London metro system,
which has a capacity of 30000 pphpd, but thanks to its multiple
parallel lines it has distributed corridors demand across the
entire transportation network. An opposite case is Hong Kongs
metro, whose capacity is 80000 pphpd and there is only one
line from Kowloon and New Territories to Nathan Road. But
the high level of demand is what makes this metro system
protable ([1]).
B. Main components of a BRT system
A BRT system has seven main components ([5],[6]):
busways, stations, vehicles, fare collection, intelligent trans-
portation systems, service and operation plans, and branding
elements.
The busways or corridors are the main component of the
BRT systems and it is where the vehicles circulate; they are
like the rails of a metro system. They are also the most
expensive and one of the most visible elements of the whole
system. Therefore, they have a direct impact on the image and
perception the users have of the system ([6]). The busways
must be exclusive for the system buses. Furthermore, the
busways must be located in the center and not at the side
of the road ([1]).
The stations are the link between the passengers, the BRT
system and other transportation systems. They are the element
that has most inuence on system image, and so, they must
have comfortable facilities so that the passengers feel at ease.
The stations must accommodate many more people than a
bus stop, so they must have a wide infrastructure ([6]) since
they are located in high demand busways. Besides, the stations
must protect the users from climate conditions. The boarding
platforms must be at the same height as the buses oor to
ease and speed up passenger access. There must be also large
capacity header stations at the ends of each busway to integrate
busways and feeder routes [1].
The vehicles are the systems element in which the passen-
gers spend most of their time. They have a direct impact on
speed, capacity, comfort and environment friendliness. They
95
are the element that most non-users see, becoming one of the
elements with most inuence over the publics perception of
the system ([6]).
Currently, there are three types of vehicles: articulated, bi-
articulated and simple. Articulated buses have the capacity for
160 passengers and operate within the busways. Bi-articulated
buses have the capacity between 240 and 270 passengers and
operate within busways. Simple buses have the capacity for 90
passengers and in some cities they operate only in mixed trafc
corridors as feeder routes. In other cities with low capacity
BRT systems operate in busways.
Fare collection has a direct effect on capacity and the sys-
tems income. If fares are collected outside the bus, it decreases
passenger waiting time through bus boarding efciency. This
is especially useful for bus routes that have high levels of
demand ([6]). The fare may be collected outside the bus at
the station entrance. Furthermore, fares should be integrated,
that is, users should be able to transfer from one bus route
to another, including feeder routes, without having to pay an
extra fare [1].
The intelligent transportation system is a technological
component that helps to improve overall system performance.
It is a combination of different technologies to retrieve all kind
of data about system operation, from the number of passengers
that enter the system to the positioning of every vehicle using
GPS, vehicle departure times, trafc conditions, the trafc
lights, etc. The goal of this component is to collect and
transform all the possible information into useful knowledge
for operators, and ultimately benets for the passengers.
The service and operation plans directly affect the users
perception of the system. A good plan allows to adjust to
the levels of demand present along the busways. Frequencies
should be high to reduce waiting times, and a good design
will also help to reduce the number of passenger transfers.
Furthermore, the route maps must be easy to understand for
users [6]. The busway and feeder routes must be physically
integrated, forming a network. Besides, the entry of other
public transport operators must be restricted ([1]).
The BRT systems must have a distinctive brand image from
other transportation systems. A good marketing strategy can
position the brand and improve its image to attract more users.
The BRT system should have a positive brand image.
III. TRANSMILENIO BRT SYSTEM
TransMilenio is Bogot as most important mass transporta-
tion system and one of the biggest BRT systems in the world.
It is based on the Curitiba BRT system, and there are new
plans for its expansion, due to its success. Similar systems
have been constructed in other Colombian cities. Currently,
the system has completed its third construction phase out of a
total of eight.
A clear denition of TransMilenio is given in [7]: Trans-
Milenio is dened as an urban mass transportation system that
privately operates high capacity articulated buses that circulate
through segregated busways, which are integrated into a system
of feeder services that cover circular peripheral services with
medium capacity buses. The system has stations with platform
level boarding and automatic doors synchronized with the
buses, where passengers take or get off the buses and the
service is limited for those who have bus tickets. A satellite
control system permanently supervises the buses, and the one-
payment fee allows the passenger to board both busway and
feeder services.
A. Infrastructure
TransMilenios infrastructure is composed of three funda-
mental elements without which operation would be impossible:
busways, stations and buses.
TransMilenio buses circulate on exclusive roads called
busways. Currently the system has 11 busways with a total
length of 104.6km ([8]). There are two types of busways:
one lane and two lanes busways. The one-lane busways have
passing lanes at stations so that buses can pass each other,
thereby providing for express routes. The busways are located
on the citys main roads and are physically separated from the
mixed trafc lanes. The busways are in the central lanes of the
roads [8], [7]. Internal rules of circulation and operation control
can be imposed to improve system performance because the
lanes are used exclusively by buses.
As a complement for the buses that circulate on busways,
there are lower capacity buses that circulate on the other roads
of the city. These routes are called feeder routes and have
predened stop points ([9]).
TransMilenio has a total of 143 stations. These stations
form the area where the users can move and board bus routes
(the paid area). The station platforms are at the same height
as the bus doors, and that makes it easy to board the buses
([8], [7]). There are three types of stations: portal, intermediate
and standard. The portal stations are the main stations of the
system and are located at the ends of each busway. They are the
starting and nal destination points for the buses. Furthermore,
they have access to feeder routes, which depart from and arrive
at these stations like the busway routes. In this way, the transfer
between routes becomes easier. The intermediate stations are
similar to the portal stations (passengers can transfer between
busway and feeder routes) but are located at intermediate
points of the busways and not at the ends ([8]). The standard
stations are smaller than the other two and only allow access
for busway routes. They are located along the busways with
an average separation of 500 meters. Their size varies and they
can serve 1, 2 or 3 buses simultaneously in each direction.
TransMilenio has three types of busway services: normal,
express and super-express. The normal services are routes
that stop in all stations along the way. They have a higher
frequency than the other types of services. The express services
stop only at some stations (from 40% and 60%), and have a
higher average speed than normal services. The stop plan of
these services has been designed according to the levels of
demand of the stations along the busway ([9]). The super-
express services are very similar to the express services. The
only difference is that they stop at fewer stations (about 20%)
of the stations along the busway. These services are better
for users that have long journeys because they stop at few
stations ([9]). Currently, TransMilenio has 1392 busway buses
(articulated or bi-articulated) and 574 feeder buses.
96
B. Speed
System buses operate at average speeds of 19 and 32 km/h
for normal and express services, respectively ([9]).
TransMilenio increased the average speed of the citys
corridors. For instance, the Caracas corridor had speeds of
12 km/h and Calle 80 of 18 km/h due to the oversupply of
private bus operators that there was before TransMilenio and
which generated trafc jams.
TransMilenio system has an average speed of 26 km/h ([9],
[1], [3]). This means that the average speed of public transport
increased by 15 km/h after TransMilenio was implemented.
Nevertheless, the speeds are not the same in all busways for
different reasons, such as the number of trafc lights along the
busways, the number of lanes and even the type of material
the street is made of [10]. For example, the Eje Ambiental
busway, is a cobbled road in the historic center of the city.
Table II shows the average bus speeds on the major busways
of TransMilenio.
Busway Speed
(km/h)
Eje Ambiental (EW) 9.07
Eje Ambiental (WE) 10.51
Caracas (SN) 22.05
Caracas (NS) 22.61
Caracas Sur (NS) 24.82
Suba (SN) 24.95
Suba (NS) 25.08
Calle 80 (WE) 26.59
NQS Sur (NS) 27.32
Caracas Sur (SN) 28.17
Am ericas (EW) 28.24
Am ericas (WE) 28.37
Calle 80 (EW) 29.27
Autonorte (NS) 31.21
NQS Central (NS) 32.80
Autonorte (SN) 33.12
NQS Sur (EW) 33.18
NQS Central (SN) 36.87
TABLE II. AVERAGE BUSWAY SPEEDS IN TRANSMILENIO
C. Capacity
TransMilenio has a maximum load capacity of 45000
passengers per hour per direction (pphpd), the highest-capacity
BRT system in the world and even outperforming many heavy
rail or metro systems ([1], [10]), see Table III.
Line Type
Ridership
(passengers/hour/direction)
Hong Kong Subway Metro 80000
S ao Paulo Line 1 Metro 60000
Mexico City Line B Metro 39300
Santiago de Chile La Moneda Metro 36000
London Victoria Line Metro 25000
Madrid Metro Line 6 Metro 21000
Buenos Aires Line D Metro 20000
Bogot a TransMilenio BRT 45000
S a Paulo 9 de julho BRT 34910
Porto Alegre Assis Brasil BRT 28000
Curitiba Eixo Sul BRT 10640
Manila MRT-3 Elevated rail 26000
Bangkok SkyTrain Elevated rail 22000
Kuala Lumpur Monorail Monorail 3000
Tunis LRT 13400
TABLE III. MAXIMUM CAPACITY OF MASS TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEMS AROUND THE WORLD
The transit capacity and quality of service manual ([11])
denes the capacity of any route or public transport corridor
as the maximum number of people that can be carried past
a given location during a given time period under specied
operating conditions without unreasonable delay, hazard, or
restriction, and with reasonable certainty. This capacity is
measured in number of passengers per hour.
A systems capacity is limited by the component with least
capacity (i.e., the bottle neck). The three key components of
the BRT systems are buses, whose capacity is measured in
number of passengers; stations, whose capacity is measured in
number of passengers and buses; and busways, whose capacity
is measured in number of buses. Whichever of these three
components has the least capacity will become the factor that
controls the system corridor. Several authors agree that BRT
systems capacity is most often limited by the stations ([9],
[10], [1]).
As mentioned before, TransMilenio has two types of
buses that operate on the busways, articulated buses and bi-
articulated buses. Table IV shows the number of passengers
that each type of vehicle can carry in a one-lane busway and
with one boarding platform stations, the average time that a
vehicle occupies a given boarding platform (dwell time) and
the average boarding time. TransMilenio increases the system
capacity by using multiple boarding platforms in each station
[1].
Type of vehicle
Maximum
vehicle
capacity
(passengers)
Average
dwell
time
(seconds)
Average bording
& alighting time
(seconds)
Corridor
capacity
(pphpd)
Vehicle
capacity
(vehicles/
hour)
Articulated 160 13 0.3 9779 61
Bi-articulated 240 14 0.3 12169 51
TABLE IV. VEHICLES AND PLATFORM CAPACITIES
Articulated buses carried an average of 1596 passengers
in 2006, which is ve times the average number of passen-
gers carried by traditional buses. Furthermore, the number of
kilometers a bus travels has increased due to the expansion of
the busways, the extension of operating hours and the increase
of express services. Each bus travelled 370 km daily in 2006
([9]).
TransMilenio was the rst BRT system to include multiple
boarding platforms inside each station. In this way, it reached
levels of capacity that only heavy rail systems had ([1]). Some
TransMilenio stations may have up to ve different platforms,
each used for a different route.
There are reasons for including multiple platforms in a
station [1]. The rst one is to offer different types of services,
such as normal and express, which can be allocated to different
platforms. The second, and most important, is to reduce the
saturation levels at stations, which helps to improve the service.
Besides, it is possible to distribute the different routes along
each platform in such a way that each route stops only at one
platform. It is then easier for users to nd routes, because the
user will associate each bus route with a platform.
In theory, one station with ve platforms may have ve
times the capacity of a station with only one platform ([1]).
To make this possible, the platform saturation level should be
between 40% and 60%.
97
A TransMilenio capacity study was conducted in 2007
([10]) and revealed which capacity values could be achieved
according to the number of boarding platforms at each station,
see Table V. Note that it is assumed that each platform has
space to keep a vehicle in line (storage space).
Type of station
Recommended
saturation
(%)
Capacity
(vehicles/
hour)
Station with one boarding platform and
no storage space
40 48
Station with one boarding platform
with storage space
60 72
Station with two boarding platforms
and no storage space
40 and 40 96=48+48
Station with two boarding platforms,
one with storage space and the other
one with no storage space
40 and 60 120=48+72
Station with two boarding platforms
with storage space
60 and 60 144=72+72
Station with three boarding platforms
where just one of them has storage
space
40, 60 and 60 192=48+72+72
Station with three boarding platforms
with storage space in each
60, 60 and 60 216=72+72+72
Station with four boarding platforms
with storage space in each
60, 60, 60 and 60 288=72+72+72+72
TABLE V. STATIONS CAPACITY ACCORDING TO THE NUMBER OF
PLATFORMS ([10])
In BRT systems, the busway capacity is much higher than
the station capacity. Bogot as City Council transit and trans-
port administration manual ([12]) states that the saturation
ow of the busways is reached when there are between 692
and 750 articulated buses per lane. The interval is between
470 and 730 for right turns and between 465 and 735 for left
turns. Note that this capacity does not contemplate elements
such as intersections or trafc lights. It is clear that the busways
capacity is much greater than the stations capacity.
The basic capacity of each busway is equal to the least
capacity station along the busway ([10]). It does not account
for questions that may increase system performance, such as
express routes. The values for the different busways are (Calle
26 and Carrera d ecima busways are not considered since they
were opened after the date of the study) ([10]):
Caracas Centro Busway: 192 buses/hour.
Autopista Norte Busway: 144 buses/hour.
Avenida Suba Busway: 144 buses/hour.
Calle 80 Busway: 48 buses/hour.
NQS Busway: 72 buses/hour.
Am ericas/Calle 13 Busway: 144 buses/hour.
Eje Ambiental Busway: 72 buses/hour.
Caracas Sur Busway: 96 buses/hour.
Caracas Sur ramal Tunal Busway: 72 buses/hour.
IV. EXISTING STUDIES
There are very few proposals in the literature that focus on
optimizing the BRT system operation. This can be explained
because BRT systems are relatively recent (until the year 2000
there were only 19 BRT systems in the world ([4])). Another
possible reason could be that many of the currently operating
BRT systems are far from reaching their maximum capacity.
For instance, none of the BRT systems operating in USA has
reached maximum capacity and all of them have plenty of
space for expanding their operation capacity ([6]).
Nevertheless, there are very interesting proposals that can
be used as a starting point to propose a model for optimizing
the operation of TransMilenio. To the best of our knowledge,
there are no automatic route design proposals. The closest to
this is the model proposed in [2]) that evaluates and selects
the best several routes.
In the following we review of different proposals in the
literature to manage and optimize the operation of different
BRT systems and, specically, for TransMilenio.
A. Proposals for optimizing of BRT systems
Most of the proposals in the literature for optimizing
BRT systems are based on bus scheduling and are focused
on varying the times between each bus departure (i.e., the
headway) of the different bus routes.
In [13] a model for optimizing BRT systems is proposed
on the basis of two elements, the headway, which is assumed
to be uniform, and the order in which the bus routes depart.
The optimization model is characterized by a set of prede-
ned bus routes (normal, zone and express routes). A random
number is generated and assigned to the headway. Then, the
algorithm nds an optimal solution to the order in which
the routes have to depart that minimizes a cost function. For
instance, the algorithm may determine that for a headway of 5
minutes the best departure order is [normal, express, express,
normal, zone]. This solution means that a normal bus route
should depart at minute 0, an express route at minute 5, a
normal route at minute 10 and an express route at minute 15
and a zone route at minute 20. This solution may be better
than for example [express, express, zone, express].
The cost function accounts for the passengers waiting at the
stations, the waiting time inside the buses and the operating
costs. It is very complete and includes several variables, such
as the number of boarding/alighting passengers by station, the
stops of each route, the monetary value of the waiting time
costs and the vehicle operating costs, among others.
The model chooses a headway for the given routes and
shufes the order of departure. A genetic algorithm is used
to reach an optimal solution. The article presents a novel
codication that is a vital element for the model and includes
a combination of the headway and route design variables.
In [14] a very complete model is proposed, with good
granularity and with greatly detailed costs. An application to
Line 2 of the BRT in Beijing is used to illustrate the model. The
total cost of a solution accounts again for passenger waiting
time at the station, passenger waiting time inside the bus,
and the vehicle operating costs. Passenger walking time from
home/ofce to the station is excluded, because bus scheduling
has no inuence on that time.
The model considers variables such as the bus depar-
ture frequency, the distance between stations, average speed
between stations, the rates and boarding times, acceleration
98
and deceleration times, the number of trafc lights between
stations, the trafc lights cycle times and others. Furthermore,
it assumes that the waiting time is equal to half of the
frequency time or headway.
Fixed costs are removed from the analysis because they
are unaffected by bus scheduling. The variable costs are
composed of operating cost per kilometer, operating hours,
vehicle depreciation, etc.
The decision variables in the optimization model are the
route headway and binary variables that represent whether or
not stations are skipped. The model seeks to minimize the total
costs and is subject to capacity constraints, vehicle availability
and headway limitations. To accomplish this of an all-stop
route and an express route is combined and their headways
are calibrated to minimize the total costs.
The algorithm complexity increases exponentially along
with the number of stations, and this is the main reason why
the authors use a genetic algorithm (it would be too costly to
use a deterministic algorithm). Another reason its that genetic
algorithms are able to naturally represent binary variables.
[2], [15], [16] introduce an optimization model for the
minimization of waiting time, travelling time and operating
costs for an express bus service, given the travel demand. A
mathematical model is built to minimize costs given a set of
stations, the distance between stations, the passenger origin-
destination matrix and a set of a priori attractive set of routes.
For each suggested route the model outputs the frequency of
the services and the size of the buses to use.
For the construction of this model the travel demand is
assumed to be xed and known, represented by a origin-
destination matrix for the analyzed stations, which must be
satised. It is also assumed that passengers arrive at an average
xed rate, passengers choose the route to their destination that
minimizes travel time and there is no limit on the available
vehicle eet.
The operating costs are computed on the basis of the cycle
cost of a full bus route, the frequency of each route and the
operating set of routes. The passengers costs are given by the
waiting time at stations, travel time and transfer time.
There are also various proposals to improve the operation
of BRT systems through the prioritization of transit signals.
[17] describes the mathematical relationship between the de-
parture frequency of a route, the cycle length of the transit
signals and the number of different signal states when the
buses arrive at an intersection. It proposes various strategies for
prioritizing signals that decrease the headway time deviation,
i.e., decrease the punctuality deviation of the buses, without
having a signicant impact in the delay of the mixed trafc.
Other proposals that study the priority control of signals in
BRT systems can be found in [18], [19], [20], [21].
B. Proposals for the optimization of TransMilenio
Since the construction of TransMilenio in the year 2000,
various proposals have been made to optimize its operation.
Most of these proposal focus on the reduction of systems
costs, to strike a balance between passengers waiting time and
operating costs.
For instance, Petri networks are used to model TransMile-
nio in [22]. The proposed model is classied as a macroscopic
deterministic simulation model, due to its detail level, process
and operation representation. The model uses a multiagent
approximation to model three important system components:
the passenger behavior (how many passengers take the bus per
hour), the busway dynamics, and the interaction between the
passengers and the buses. Since Petri networks are unable to
deal with time, trigger times are added to the nodes to represent
temporal relationships.
Three busways are modeled, Avenida Caracas, Autonorte
and Avenida de las Am ericas. The model includes the seven
most important stations out of a total of 45 on these busways.
Moreover, three routes (a normal route, an express route and
a super-express route) that stop at the same stations on their
back and forth trips were chosen.
Two Petri networks are designed. One models the whole
system and randomly assigning buses to routes, and the other
separates the routes from the buses. Random models have the
advantage of being able to simulate the interaction between
routes. The random model outperforms non-random models to
satisfy the demand with the minimum number of resources.
Finally, the random model works as an integrated system and
it is capable of solving perturbation by itself. The result of this
simulation shows that there is a point at which adding more
buses to the system does not improve the performance.
In [23] a genetic algorithm is used to nd the best fre-
quency for pre-established bus routes that minimizes passenger
waiting time. The frequency is determined by the assignment
of buses to each route. The model tries to minimize the time
the passengers spend on the system, which is composed of the
travel time plus the waiting time at the stations.
The genetic algorithm chromosome size is equal to the
number of routes and the population is initialized randomly
with the constraint that each route has at least one bus
assigned. A random matrix is also created along with the initial
population, this matrix contains all origin-destination trips.
This algorithm assumes the user is smart and will always
choose the best route to go to his/her destination.
The arrival of buses at the station and the passengers wait-
ing time are modeled by a Poisson process and a distributed
Erlang event, respectively. It accounts for the scenario where
buses are full and passenger cannot board. In these cases the
passengers have to wait to the next bus.
A graph with the routes was designed to measure the time,
where each node represents a station and the arcs represent
the connections between them. The arc costs are the travel
time between the stations that the arcs connect. Additionally,
arcs with the possible express routes are included. Dijkstras
algorithm is then used to compute the shortest routes, and it
is executed before running the algorithm.
In [24] a model to evaluate TransMilenio routes is built
based on the data provided by a origin-destination matrix. The
trip probabilities between stations and passenger arrival rate
to each station are computed from this matrix, assuming that
the users know which is the best route to reach their destina-
tion. The model is implemented in a commercial simulation
software package.
99
The model includes a set of constraints regarding user
behavior when choosing their route to reach to their desti-
nation. The input data for the evaluation algorithm are the
origin-destination pairs, the stops of each service and the
quantity of passengers associated with each pair. TransMilenio
data is also required, such as existing routes, their frequency,
vehicle capacity, speed, the distance between stations and other
network characteristics.
The model is composed of three modules. The network
module stores information about the physical infrastructure,
such as stations, the distance between them, busways, and
others; the stations module is in charge of the boarding and
alightment at each station and the arrivals module assigns
passenger origin and destination.
The time that the passenger spends inside the station is
given by the travel time, the bus stopping time and passenger
waiting time at the station. The bus arrival times are assumed
to be uniform. Therefore, the waiting time of each passenger
is equal to half of the routes headway.
C. Analysis of proposed models
Most of proposed models are far from being able to
represent what goes on in the real world because they are not
detailed enough to represent what happens within a BRT sys-
tem. We are going to describe the advantages and drawbacks
of each model.
The model presented in [23] does not account for vehicle
operating costs. This fact is clearly reected in the results,
where the best solution is to increase bus departure frequencies
and use the entire bus eet. The models do not adequately
represent constraints concerning capacities within the system,
which is modeled for the whole corridor but not for each
station individually. This overlooks the fact that there are some
stations that have more demand than others. The model does
not account for deceleration and acceleration times, passengers
boarding and alighting times or dwell times at signalized
intersections. An advantage of this proposal is that it builds
a graph that pre-calculates the travel times between each pair
of stations for each route. This is helpful to nd the optimal
route between two stations.
The model presented in [22] has several voids, such as
the fact that it does not account for passenger waiting time or
vehicle operating costs. Neither does it account for passenger
congestion within the stations, vehicle congestion at stations,
discriminated speeds between each pair of stations, or assign
distribution times to passenger and vehicle arrivals at stations.
On the other hand, it has several advantages, such as consider-
ing that when buses are full passengers must wait for the next
bus. The model is a user-friendly graphic tool that can model
a system in which equations are not known.
The model presented in [24] refers to some important
constraints but the model does not include any. Other con-
straints included as assumptions are not necessarily realistic.
For instance, it is assumed that if a passenger is going to make
a trip that is 5 or less stations of long, he/she will only take
normal (all-stops) services. It does not consider decelerating
and accelerating times, passenger boarding and alighting times
or dwell times at signaled intersections either.
The model presented in [13] assumes the same speed
between every pair of stations, which is not realistic. It does
not consider the bus passenger capacity, vehicle capacity at the
stations and passenger capacity at the stations either. Waiting
times at signaled intersections are not considered either. A
major drawback of this model is that it uses the number of
passengers that board and alight from buses at each station
rather than an origin-destination matrix as input. This demand
data is not detailed enough to identify passenger behavior.
The model accounts for passenger waiting times and vehicle
operating costs. The introduction of an innovative variable-size
codication and the use of binary variables to indicate whether
or not a bus stops at a station.
The model presented in [14] is one of the most complete.
In fact, it incorporates most cost variables. It is the only model
that includes passenger boarding and alighting times and the
stop times at the signaled intersections. Nevertheless, it has
some drawbacks. For example, it only considers one express
route, i.e., scenarios with several express routes cannot be
evaluated. The model is aimed at reaching the best departure
frequency for a normal and an express route that operate along
the same busway. Its parameters are the origin-destination
matrix, the stations in which the express routes stops and the
bus eet size. Note, nally that the model does not consider
vehicle congestion or passenger congestion at stations.
The model presented in [2] is also very complete and
perhaps the best at representing the costs of a real BRT
system. This is accomplished thanks to the inclusion of several
express routes on one busway and because it is good at
differentiating travel time and operating costs. But it is not free
of drawbacks. For instance, it does not include acceleration and
deceleration times, boarding and alighting times or stop times
at signaled intersections. The proposed model searches the
departure frequencies that optimize BRT operation according
to a dened cost function.
In summary, none of the reviewed proposals considers ve-
hicle congestion at stations or passenger congestion at stations.
This is worrying, because, as stated in [9], [10], [1] the capacity
bottleneck of a BRT system is the vehicle capacity at the
stations. There are not many proposals that account for this
point because hardly any BRT systems have reached maximum
capacity, which could be the reason why the proposals have
focused mainly on the minimization of passenger waiting times
an operating costs, and not on the increase of system capacity.
We found that none of the proposals offer automated route
design. [14] and [2], which offer validation models for routes
that can be given to the model as a parameter, come the closest.
We also found that none of the proposals take a multi-objective
approach to the problem.
V. PROPOSED OPTIMIZATION MODEL FOR
TRANSMILENIO
In the previous section we reviewed the proposals in the
literature for optimizing BRT system operation, with an special
emphasis on the TransMilenio system. In this section, we
provide a mathematical model for the optimization of Trans-
Milenio that adapts elements of the above proposals, mainly
[14] and [2], and incorporates novel elements accounting for
the features of that system.
100
The problem is to nd departure frequencies for the
established routes that minimize the time passengers spend
inside the system and operating costs. This set of frequencies
must satisfy the constraints associated with the TransMilenio
operation. The problem is analysed only during the rush hour
time window.
A. Available information
The set of stations determines the size of the BRT system.
The number of stations is directly related to the complexity
of the problem to be solved. Information about the system
stations, the busways to which they belong, and each stations
neighboring stations must be considered. The set of TransMile-
nio stations is denoted by E = e
1
, . . . , e
143
, where e
i
refers
to the i-th station, i = 1, ..., 143.
The routes are paths between two stations (usually main
stations) that buses must take and are composed of the set
of station at which buses must stop. The set of TransMilenio
routes is denoted by R = r
1
, . . . , r
90
, where r
j
is the j-th
route, j = 1, ..., 90.
The station vehicle capacity is very important, even more
so in cases where nearing full capacity the BRT system is,
like the TransMilenio system. When the system is nearly at
maximum capacity the problem is to nd feasible solutions
that can meet the trip demands. The station vehicle capacity
e
i
is denoted by k
s
e
i
, i = 1, . . . , 143.
The information required about the buses is their capacity
and the quantity of buses in operation. We assume that the
buses operating along each route have the same capacity.
This information is important in order to impose capacity
constraints within the buses and to prevent to operate with
more buses than the available. The bus capacity is denoted
by k
b
r
j
, j = 1, . . . , 90 which is the passenger capacity of the
vehicles that operate the r
j
-th route.
The distance between stations is used to compute the travel
times between each pair of stations. d
e
i
e
j
denotes the distance
between stations e
i
and e
j
, i, j = 1, ..., 90.
Speeds between each pair of stations are very important
because not all busways have the same characteristics and
therefore the speed is not always the same. Some busways have
signaled intersections, whereas others are built over highways
where they can travel at faster speeds. The speed between the
stations e
i
and e
j
is denoted by s
e
i
e
j
.
Acceleration and deceleration times along with boarding
and alighting times are used to compute the total time of a
stop at a station. These values are constant and independent
of passenger demand level in the system. Based on the model
proposed in [14], we assume that the times are the same for all
stations. The acceleration and deceleration times are denoted
by p.
The boarding and alighting times are used to determine the
total stop time of a bus at a station. The stop time increases
with the amount of people that board or alight the bus. Based
on the model proposed in [14], we can calculate passenger
boarding time at a station as
r
j
e
i

, where
r
j
e
i
is the
passenger boarding rate for route r
j
at station e
i
and
is
the passenger boarding time. In the same way, the alighting
time is denoted by
r
j
e
i

, where is used for alightings.

Costs are usually divided into passenger waiting time costs
and the BRT system operating costs. The model that we
propose accounts for three types of costs: waiting time at
stations, waiting time on buses and vehicle operating costs.
Fixed costs, such as station cleaning, electricity, administrative
wages, rents, and others, are not considered because they are
independent of the BRT system operation ([14]). The unit cost
per kilometer, the unit cost for waiting time at the station and
the unit cost for waiting time inside the buses, are denoted by
O
,
S
and
B
, respectively. These values are used in the cost
function to evaluate the quality of the sets of routes.
The origin-destination matrix contains information about
passenger demand, i.e., the amount of users traveling from
station e
i
to station e
j
. We use an origin-destination matrix
with rush hour data, because this is the time window when
the system is closer to maximum capacity. The number of
passengers that travel from station e
i
to station e
j
is denoted
by q
e
i
e
j
.
Operating hours is the time during which the BRT system
is operating, denoted by T.
B. Decision variables
The decision variables for the proposed model are the the
frequencies associated with each route. The set of frequencies
is denoted by F = f
1
, . . . , f
90
, where f
r
k
is the frequency
for the buses of the k-th route. The frequencies identify how
often the buses of a given route depart. The headways can be
computed from the frequencies and vice-versa.
C. Cost function
Multiple authors (see [14], [2], [13]) agree that the cost
function, C, is composed of the sum of three elements: vehicles
operating costs, C
O
; passenger waiting time at station costs,
C
S
, and passenger travelling time costs, C
B
. These last two
costs can be grouped as the passenger total trip costs ([14]).
Then, the function to be optimized (minimized) is:
minC = C
O
+C
S
+C
B
,
The operating costs can be calculated by:
C
O
=
O
r
k
R
T f
r
k
D
r
k
,
where
O
is the unit cost per kilometre for a BRT vehicle,
R is the set of all routes in the system, T is the BRT system
operating hours, f
r
k
is the frequency of route r
k
and D
r
k
is the length of the path covered by route r
k
. D
r
k
can be
computed from the distances (d
e
i
e
j
) between the consecutive
stations included in the k-th route.
The waiting time at station costs can be computed as
follows:
C
S
=
S

e
i
,e
j
E
q
e
i
e
j
r
k
R
f
r
k
x
r
k
e
i
e
j
,
where
S
is the waiting time unit cost, q
e
i
e
j
is the passenger
trip demand for the (e
i
, e
j
) origin-destination pair, f
r
k
is the
frequency of route r
k
, x
r
k
e
i
e
j
is a binary variable that indicates
101
whether a route r
k
is a good option for travelling from the
station e
i
to the station e
j
(its value is 1 if the route is attractive
and 0 otherwise), and is the bus arrival distribution at the
stations, which are assumed Poisson distributions.
The travel time costs can be computed by:
C
B
=
B
e
i
,e
j
E
q
e
i
e
j

r
k
R
t
r
k
e
i
e
j
f
r
k
x
r
k
e
i
e
j
r
k
R
f
r
k
x
r
k
e
i
e
j
,
where
B
is the travel time unit cost, f
r
k
is the frequency of
route r
k
, and t
r
k
e
i
e
j
is the travel time in route r
k
for the (e
i
, e
j
)
origin-destination pair, with
t
r
k
e
i
e
j
= t
1r
k
e
i
e
j
+t
2r
k
e
i
e
j
,
where t
1r
k
e
i
e
j
and t
2r
k
e
i
e
j
are the travel time and delay time from
station e
i
to station e
j
,
t
1r
k
e
i
e
j
=
d
e
i
e
j
s
e
i
e
j
,
t
2r
k
e
i
e
j
=
e
j
e
i
P
r
k
r
k
e
i

f
r
k
+
e
j
e
i
P
r
k
r
k
e
i

f
r
k
+N
e
i
e
j
d,
and
d
e
i
e
j
and s
e
i
e
j
are the distance and average speed
between station e
i
to station e
j
, respectively,

r
k
e
i
and
r
k
e
i
are the boarding and alighting rates at
station e
i
for route r
k
, respectively,

and
are the boarding and alighting times per

passenger,
N
e
i
e
j
is the number of stations between station e
i
and
station e
j
,
P
r
k
is the set of stations at which route r
k
stops,
p is the acceleration and deceleration delay at station.
D. Constraints
The bus passenger capacity constraint ensures that the
frequency of bus departure is high enough to prevent over-
crowding inside the buses. If this constraint is not applied,
buses may be full when the arrive at stations, passengers will
have to wait for the next bus.
k
b
r
k
f
r
k

a
e
i
P
r
k
N
e
j
P
r
k
q
e
i
e
j

f
r
k
x
r
k
e
i
e
j
r
m
R
f
r
m
x
r
m
e
i
e
j
,
r
k
R, a P
r
k
, where
k
b
r
k
is the passenger capacity of the buses circulating
along route r
k
,
f
r
k
is the frequency of route r
k
,
P
r
k
is the set of stations at which route r
k
stops,
q
e
i
e
j
is the passenger trip demand for the (e
i
, e
j
)
origin-destination pair,
x
r
j
e
i
e
j
indicate whether a route r
j
is a good option for
travelling from the station e
i
to the station e
j
. Its value
is 1 if the route is attractive and 0 otherwise.
The bus eet size constraint prevents the set of routes from
operating with more buses than are available in the system.
This assures that the system is working with the available
resources:
T
N
r
j
1
f
r
j
, r
j
R,
where T is the BRT system operating hours and N
r
j
is the
number of vehicles that can operate along the route r
j
.
The choice of best route constraint helps to model pas-
senger behavior when choosing a route to travel to their
destination. It models the possibility of passengers often being
able to take more than one route to reach their destination in
the same time.
x
r
k
e
i
e
j
= 1
B
t
r
k
e
i
e
j

S
+
B

r
m
=r
k
t
r
m
e
i
e
j
f
r
m
x
r
m
e
i
e
j
r
m
=r
k
f
r
m
x
r
m
e
i
e
j
,
r
k
R, e
i
, e
j
E.
The station vehicle capacity constraint is very important
especially in systems that have great passenger demands and
are nearing maximum capacity level. The importance of this
constraint is that the vehicle station capacity is the bottleneck
of the BRT systems ([9], [1]), like TransMilenio.
k
s
e
i

r
j
R
v
r
j
e
i
f
r
j
, e
i
E,
where k
s
e
i
is the vehicle capacity of station e
i
, and v
r
j
e
i
are
binary variables that point out whether station e
i
is visited on
the route r
j
.
VI. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
TransMilenio is Bogot as most important mass transporta-
tion system and one of the biggest BRT systems in the world.
There are very few proposals in the literature that focus
on optimizing BRT system operation, mainly because BRT
systems are relatively a recent form of transport and many
of the currently operating BRT systems are nowhere near full
capacity.
Most of proposals, and specically for TransMilenio, are
based on bus scheduling and focus on varying the times
between each bus departure (i.e., the frequencies) of the
different bus routes to minimize costs.
In these proposals, the set of routes are part of the available
information, along with the stations at which the buses stop,
and they remain constant during the execution of the model.
In the mathematical modeling introduced in this paper we
also analyze the frequencies of the routes to minimize costs.
Note that an automated design of routes that minimize the
cost function is an open research line. Rather than designing
new routes, the aim would be to optimize existing routes by
102
modifying at most 30% of the stations on the original route.
This 30% was xed by TransMilenio experts at meetings. The
reasons for just modifying rather than redesigning routes is
that the social impact of modifying the routes is not too high,
whereas, the search space is greatly reduced and, therefore,
better solutions can be found in less time. An important
drawback is that it may not be possible to nd a global
optimum, because the best routes may have less than 70% of
the stations in common with the original routes. In this case
it is more important to reduce the social impact on passengers
that comes with the modication of the routes.
We are now working with TransMilenio experts on extend-
ing and solving the proposed optimization problem. We have
selected evolutionary algorithms to solve the problem since
they have previously proven to be efcient tools. Additionally,
the research team is experience in solving other complex
optimization problems using this metaheuristic.
The model we propose is a single objective optimiza-
tion model since only costs are minimized. However, other
objectives could be simultaneously considered, leading to a
multi-objective optimization model. Evolutionary algorithms
would be then used to identify Pareto optimal solutions, and
the experts preferences could be incorporated into the search
process to reach a compromise (satiscing) solution.
Another future research line that we propose is the possi-
bility of adding transfer times to the model. Transfer time is
the time it takes to a passenger to switch from one route to
another, usually because the rst bus that a passenger takes
does not stop at the station for which he or she is heading.
These times are normally penalized because transfers are an
inconvenience for passengers.
Finally, another open research line, and a key aspect for
correctly modeling BRT systems is users behavior. It is
important to correctly model which routes users given an
origin/destination pair will choose. They are likely to choose
the fastest route, but this is not always the case, because
users may not know which the fastest route is or because
the frequency of the fastest route is low and they opt for an
alternative route. This is one of the least explored issues in the
BRT systems literature.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The paper was supported by Madrid Regional Govern-
ment project S-2009/ESP-1685 and the Spanish Ministry of
Science and Innovation project MYTM2011-28983-C03-03.
The authors would also like to acknowledge the Ministry of
Information and Communication Technologies of Colombia
and its Talento Digital scholarship program for funding the
studies of Francisco J. Pe na, and Alirio Garca for the useful
information he provided about TransMilenio system.
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104
Optimization in Smallholders Agricultural Farm: A
Case of Goat Rearing in Malaysia

1
Mohd Sahar Sauian,
2
Norfarhanah Che Othman
Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences
Universiti Teknologi MARA
40450 Shah Alam, Malaysia.
1
mshahar@tmsk.uitm.edu.my,
2
farhanah.co@gmail.com

AbstractOperations research problems were normally based on
the optimum allocation of resources. The application is
extensively used in various fields of research and development,
including management, transport, finance and agriculture. Some
of the common approaches available to solve such problems are
linear programming, goal programming, integer programming,
network and scheduling. In Malaysia, rearing of goats by farmers
who were classified as small and medium entrepreneurs, were
faced with many problems, particularly with respect to higher
costs and diseases. In retrospect, goat rearing is not as profitable
as compared to cattle rearing. This paper highlights the use of
optimization tool in balancing demand of goats in livestock
rearing. A goal programming approach is utilized in order to
plan and satisfy seasonal as well as normal unseasonal demand.
The model could also take into consideration the difference in
priorities of the demand for different types of goats during the
festive and non-festive seasons. The results suggest the
practicality of the model in determining the optimal
combinations of various types of goats to be supplied in order to
satisfy the targeted goals. Hence, applying this tool would give
beneficial impact to the entrepreneurs as it could be used as a
model for managing small agricultural farms.
Keywords: optimization; resource allocation; linear programming;
MCDM; goal programming; multiple goals.
I. INTRODUCTION
Optimal utilization of resources has been the fundamental
aspect in the application of operations research. Various
approaches of operations research techniques had been utilized
in solving problems in manufacturing, distribution, logistics,
scheduling and even in management. One of the approaches
includes the linear programming approach which has been
widely used in multifarious fields of research and development
(RD). The main idea is to optimize the use of resources in
order to gather maximum returns. In recent years, the use of
MCDM (multiple-criteria decision making) approach has been
growing both in theory and practice.
MCDM is seen as a better optimization tool as it can handle
problems with multiple objectives and it can also take into
consideration different measurements as well. As such,
MCDM allows appropriate selection of resource allocation
strategies depending on the different objectives and
management `styles' of particular individuals or households
[1]. An example related to the use of MCDM is a case of
Norwegian meat production industry where mixed integer
programming model was used to optimize livestock allocation.
The model successfully integrates components of supply chain
management, routing of supply vehicles and production
scheduling at the abattoir, where production plans determine
transportation as well [2]. Another aspect of MCDM is used in
marketing and production planning using a goal programming
approach [3].
II. LIVESTOCK SECTOR IN MALAYSIA
The agricultural sector is one of the twelve potential
National Economic Areas (NKEAs) that have been listed to
drive economic growth in the tenth Malaysia Plan. During the
period (2011-2015), the sector is expected to contribute up to
7.6% of GDP [4]. The increasing demand was particularly
prominent in the ruminant sub-sector (cattle and goat).
The Malaysian demand for goats were particularly due to
mutton, aqiqah and qurban as well as dairy. From 2006-2010,
goat rearing industry showed a modest growth of 6.76% per
year [5]. However, Malaysia still depends on imported goat
from oversea such as Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia,
South Africa and Thailand in order to meet the demand.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-Based Industry
(MOA) gave special focus on strengthening the ruminant
sector by formulating strategies to increase the supply of good
quality of cattle and goats. This was done by implementating
commercial cattle and goat husbandry projects through the
government and the private sectors.The move done by the
government is to increase the competitiveness of the
agricultural sector by maximizing the income through
optimum utilization of resources, especially for smallholders
farms [6].
III. OBJECTIVE
The objective of the study is to apply the goal
programming approach in optimizing the use of resources in a
goat farm in Selangor, Malaysia.
105
IV. METHODOLOGY
The methodological approach in dealing with this problem
is through the utilization of goal programming. It seems
appropriate to use this method due to the existence of many
goals as well as the different measures of the goal themselves.
Various examples of goal programming approaches were
applied in manufacturing industries, finance, operations
management as well as in agriculture. Rehman, Lara and
Romero (1992), for instance, used goal programming in the
optimization of livestock rationing [7]. Kwak, Schneiderjans
(1993) used goal programming approach in marketing
distribution [8]. On the other hand, Sauian (2006) used the
approach in strategizing production in a plastic factory, while
Vitoriano, Ortuno and Tirado (2009) utilized the approach in
humanitarian aid distributions [9, 10].
The distinguishing feature of the goal programming
approach as compared to ordinary linear programming is that,
it tends to minimize the deviations from the given goals.
V. APPLICATION OF GOAL PROGRAMMING
AT KTP FARM
The company KTP Farm, focuses on rearing cattle and
goat commercially using feedlot system to meet the local
demand. The cattle farm has less problem as it is always
profitable to manage. However, for managing the goat farm it
needs proper attention in the use of resources as quite often
medical costs tend to fluctuate as goats are prone to contact
diseases. The goats farm is capable to hold up to 600 goats
under 15 pans or barn at a time. However, they are around 5
pans reserved for the kid and lamb yeanlings. There are five
types of goats named Boer, Jamnapari, Katjang, sheep and
cross breed Boer-Jamnapari reared by KTP Farm.
Given the various information supplied by the management
of KTP Farm, we can formulate the relevant optimization goal
programming model.
A. Goal Programming Model at KTP Farm
The goal programming model for a non-festive month is
given as follows:
Minimize Z = P
1
d
1
-
+ P
2
d
2
-
+P
3
d
3
+
+P
4
d
4
+
(1)
Subject to:
c
j
x
j
+ d
1
-
- d
1
+
= ( j=1,..,5) (goal 1) (2)
x
j
+ I
t-1
- d
2
-
-d
2
+
= H (j=1,..,5) (goal 2) (3)
a
j
x
j
+ d
3
-
- d
3
+
= G (j=1,,5) (goal 3) (4)
b
j
x
j
+ d
4
-
- d
4
+
= (j=1,,5) (goal 4) (5)
e
j
x
j
h (j=1,,5) (6)
k
j
x
j
t (j=1,,5) (7)
x
j
L
j
(j=1,..,5) (8)
x
j
U
j
(j=1,..,5) (9)
and x
j
0 (for j=1,..5), d
i
+
, d
i
-
0 (for i=1,..,4) (10)
where:
P
1
, P
2
,P
3
,P
4
: priorities to the respective goals,
x
j
: number of goat j supply from the farm,
c
j
: profit per unit of goat j,
a
j
: feeding cost per unit of goat j,
b
j
: medical cost per unit of goat j,
e
j
: labor cost per unit of goat j,
k
j
: overtime cost per unit of goat j,
I
t-1
: stock of goat from previous month,
: targeted profit,
H : targeted demand of goats,
G : targeted total feeding cost for goats,
: targeted total medical cost for goats,
j : types of goat (1=Boer goat, 2= Jamnapari goat,
3=Kitjang goat, 4= sheep, 5=cross-breed Jamnapari-
Boer goat),
h : maximum labor cost available per month,
t : maximum overtime cost per month,
L
j
: lower bounds for total number of goats,
U
j
: upper bounds for total number of goats,
d
j
+
: overachievement of targeted goals,
d
j
-
: underachievement of targeted goals.
The priorities for the problem are as follows:
P
1
: to maximize the targeted profit per month,
P
2
: to satisfy the targeted demand per month,
P
3
: to minimize feeding cost per month,
P
4
: to minimize medical cost per month.
From the formulation above, equation (1) shows the
objective function which is minimizing the deviations from the
targeted goals. Equations (2) to (5) are the goal constraints
while equations (6) to (7) are constraints related to the
availability of resources. Equations (8) and (9), on the other
hand, are the lower bounds and upper bounds respectively,
whereas equation (10) denotes the non-negativity constraints.
This model as mentioned is for the non-festive season model.
B. Goal Programming Model for Festive Season
The model for festive season can also be formulated. The
definition of festive season here denotes the months where
Muslims use to celebrate hariraya puasa or hariraya
qurban in Malaysia. Normally, the demand of live goats is
normally higher by 20 to 25%. For the year 2012, the festive
months are August, September and October where both
hariraya puasa and hariraya qurban fall within these
months. It is therefore appropriate to utilize this model as
different from the previous non-festive season model. This is
due to the difference in demand for both seasons.
106
The same type of problem formulation is carried out for the
festive season model as done for the non-festive season model.
However, the values of the targeted goals as well as some of
the right-hand side values of the resources availabilities are
also higher.
C. Sources of Data
All the data for this study is collected from both the
management office as well as the site of the farm. A weeks
stay in the farm and the mingling of the research team with the
workers and supervisors of the farm gives an added advantage
to get valuable information as well as the required data.

VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
A. General Optimum Results
Using SAS/OR software the goal programming models for
both non-festive and festive seasons can be solved. The
summary of the results can be depicted in Table I.
TABLE I: SUMMARY OF THE GOAL PROGRAMMING SOLUTIONS
FOR NON-FESTIVE AND FESTIVE SEASONS

Variables Entity Non-Festive
Season
(Model 1)
Festive
Season
(Model2)
X
1

X2
X3
X
4

X
5

Boer Goat
Jamnapari Goat
Katjang Goat
Sheep
Cross Breed Boer-Jamn.
40
60
120
100
50
70
30
120
180
50
- Profit RM 120,000 RM 160,000
*Non-festive season: P1=0,P20,P3=P4=0, d2
-
=30
* Festive season: P10,P2=P3=P4=0 d1
-
=12,800.
As shown from Table 1, all values of Ps for the non-festive
model are equal to 0 except P
2
is not equal to 0. This
means that goals 1, 3 and 4 are achieved, while goal 2 is not
achieved, which is shown by the value of d
2
-
= 30. Thus, the
non-festive seasons, the optimum supply of goats per month is
recorded as 40 for Boer goat, 60 for Jamnapari goat, 120 for
Katjang goat, 100 for sheep and 50 for cross-breed Jamnapari-
Boer goat. The targeted profit of RM 120,000 per month is also
achieved.
For the festive season model, on the other hand, the
optimum supply per month is recorded as 70 for Boer goat, 30
for Jamnapari goat, 120 for Katjang goat, 180 for sheep and 50
for cross-breed Jamnapari-Boer goat. The results suggest that
the supply of boer goat and sheep is almost double in the
festive months. It makes sense, as boer goat and sheep are
preferred to be slaughtered for qurban in the festive months.
Nonetheless, the festive season model shows all goals are
achieved with the exception of the profit-goal is underachieved
by RM 12,800 as depicted from the results that P
1
0 and d
1
-
=12,800. However, the value of the under-achievement for this
target is not high (about 8%) below target.

B. Constraint Analysis
The results can further be explained using part of the
constraint analysis. It is done to determine whether there exists
some realignment of resources to reach the optimum solution
given above. The analysis for the non-festive season is given in
Table II.
Table II depicts that the targeted profit is over-achieved by
RM 1,100 as d
1
+
=1,100. However, demand is underachieved by
30 goats and sheep compared to the targeted demand of 400.
This is shown by the value of d
2
-
equals to 30. On the other
hand, the feeding cost for goat is underachieved by RM 5,480.
This can be seen from the results that the value of d
3
-
is 5,480.
This means that the total cost of feeding for goat is actually
only RM 12,620 per month compared to the targeted feeding
cost of RM 18,100.
The medical cost per month, is also underachieved as d
4
-
is
equal to 870. By looking at the utilization of the other
resources, like total labor and overtime costs, it seems that they
are underachieved.
TABLE II : CONSTRAINT ANALYSIS FOR NON-FESTIVE SEASON
For the festive season, on the other hand, part of the
relevant constraint analysis is shown in Table III below:

TABLE III: CONSTRAINT ANALYSIS FOR FESTIVE SEASON

From Table III, it reveals that the profit goal of RM 160,000
for festive season is underachieved by RM 12,800 as d
1
-
=12,800. The demand however, is directly achieved as both d
2
+

and d
2
-
are equal to zeroes. In retrospect, feeding cost and
medical cost for goats and sheep are underachieved by RM
6,320 and RM 944 respectively as shown by the values of d
3
-

and d
4
-
. It appears that the costs are lower than the expected or
targeted costs.
In the case of labor and overtime cost for handling activities
for goat, it shows that they are under-utilized as shown by the
positive values of d
5
-
and d
6
-
.

VII. CONCLUSION
The study reveals that the goal programming approach can
be applied in solving this smallholders farm management and
operational problem. The results indicated that by applying
both the non-festive and festive models, we can distinguish
different strategies in fulfilling the demands at different
seasons. As can be seen from the constraint analyses from
Constraints/goals RHS value d
+
(row-i) d
-
(row-i)
G1/profit
G2/satisfying demand
G3/feeding cost
G4/medical cost
Labor cost
Overtime cost
120,000
400
18,100
1,500
2,100
945
1,100
0
0
0
0
0
0
30
5,480
870
1,059
375
Constraints/goals RHS value d+ (row-i) d- (row-i)
G1/profit
G2/satisfying demand
G3/feeding cost
G4/medical cost
Labor cost
Overtime cost
160,000
450
21,100
1,800
2,300
945
0
0
0
0
0
0
12,800
0
6,320
944
1,035
255
107
previous Tables II and III, the number of live goats and sheep
that can be supplied during the non-festive season is below the
targeted demand but during the festive season, it could frulfill
the demand. Thus, it makes sense to strategize by adopting
aggressive marketing for promoting demand in both seasons. It
is also sanguine to embark in enlarging the farm for increasing
supply of goat and sheep, especially during the festive season.
The results also gave an opportunity for farm management
to evaluate its position whether to maximize profit or minimize
operational costs. However, looking at the scenario of the
problem with conflicting goals, it is customary to adopt an act
which satisfies all the goals. In other words, getting a
compromising solution is a better choice than getting the
maximum values of profit only.
The study also gives an opportunity for the research team to
interact fully with the workers in the smallholders farm where
theoretical knowledge can be operationally applied in farm
management. The awareness of making decisions when
confronted with conflicting and multiple goals given the
existing constraints of resources would be an added advantage
to the management of farm. Last but not least, this exercise can
be applied to many other similar smallholders farm nation-
wide.
REFERENCES

[1] M. Herreroa, R.H .Fawcetta, J.B Dent, Bio-economic Evaluation of
Dairy Farm Management Scenarios using Intergrated Simulations and
Multiple Criteria Models, Elsevier Journal of Agricultural Systems, Vol
62, 1999, pp 169-188.
[2] I. Gribkoskaia, O.B Gullberg, K.J Horden, Optimization Model for a
Livestock Collection Plan, International Journal of Physical
Distribution and Logistic Management, Vol 36, No 2, 2006, pp 136-152.
[3] B.W Taylor, P.F Anderson, Aspects of Goal Programming Approach to
Marketing/ Production Planning , Industrial Marketing Management,
Vol 8, 1979, pp 136-144.
[4] Economic Planning Unit, Prime Ministers Department, Malaysia, 10
th

Malaysia Plan 2011-2015, 2010.
[5] Economic Planning Unit, Prime Ministers Department, Malaysia 9
th

Malaysia Plan 2006-2010, 2006.
[6] Ministry of Agriculture, Malaysia, NAP3: New Agricultural Policy 3,
1998-2010, 1998.
[7] T.Rehman, P. Lara, C. Romero, Livestock Ration Formulation and
Multiple-Criteria Decision making Techniques: A Review and Future
Prospects, Proceedings of the 10
th
International Conference on
Multiple-Criteria Decision Making, Vol 2, Taipei, Taiwan, 1992, pp 87-
96.
[8] N.K. Kwak, M.J. Schneiderjans, An Application of linear Goal
programming to the Market Distribution, European Journal of
Operational research, Vol 32 1993, pp 334-344.
[9] M.S. Sauian, A Goal Programming Approach in Strategizing
Production in a Plastic Manufacturing Firm, 7
th
. International
Conference on Multi-Objective and Goal Programming, (MOPGP06),
Tours, France, June 2006.
[10] B. Vitoriano, T. Ortuno, G.Tirado, HADS, a Goal Programming-Based
Humanitarian Aid Distribution System, Journal of Multi-Criteria
Decision Analysis, Vol 16 (2009), John Wiley & Sons, 2010, pp 55-64.

108

Col l an, Mi kael ; Hml i nen, J ar i ; Luukka, Pasi ( Eds. )

Pr oceedi ngs of t he FORS40 Wor kshop
LUT Sci ent i f i c and Exper t i se Publ i cat i ons No. 13, 2013
Resear ch Repor t s - Tut ki musr apor t i t
I SSN- L 2243- 3376
I SSN 2243- 3376
I SBN 978- 952- 265- 436- 6 El ect r oni c publ i cat i on
1. Oper at i ons Resear ch

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Mikael Collan, J ari Hmlinen, and Pasi Luukka (Editors)

Proceedings of the Finnish Operations Research

IDSIA, Dalle Molle Institute for Articial Intelligence

ild, Institute for Logistics and Service Management

. Otherwise, with probability 1 , it decides to do

, Tommi K arkk ainen

and Pekka Hotokka

Department of Mathematical Information Technology,

copy of s with visit to depot at c

is optimal substitution in problem Z(T, A, B), then

T, and equality to zero

T(A, B) with W(t

T(A, B) = T(A, B) (all optima are nontrivial) or

, T(A, B), and this positive

in Z(T, A, B). It is also clear that for t

is trivial, then so do the other optima (if any), and hence

T(A, B). Moreover this will be

belongs to some pre-specied set. Two particular

, ) 0 for any [0, q(A))

, ) 0 for each [0, 1).

loses its optimality under such perturba-

remains optimality for any

(, A), < RS(t

(, A), < RA(t

is a trivial optimum, so its stability

, A) = 1. The next result, which is a straightforward

, A) will become even more transparent if we recall

= (1, 2, 3), should be equal to a

((k, l), (, )),

((k, l), (, )).

is a non-empty bounded closed interval

, by considering a finite set of given criteria

. A decision matrix representation of

(t)dt for any x R,

td(t) Q() = 0, thus

< 0. Then the credibilistic risk premium

(x + Q()) u(x + Q()) +

< 0. A fuzzy variable with the credibility

< 0. Then the agent u is

(x, , u) 0 for any x and ;

(x +)) for any x and ;

(Q(x +)) Q(u

(x +)) for any x and ;

> 0, a fuzzy variable and x R.

(x +Q() (x, , u))

> 0. The following assertions are equivalent:

(x +Q() (x, , u)) =

. From these equalities we obtain the

> 0 and g is strictly increasing, thus the following

() of problem (3) is given by:

((1 +r)s +))

((1 +r)s +Q())

(x) 0 for any x R;

() in the presence of risk is bigger than the optimal

, where is used for alightings.

are the boarding and alighting times per

Col l an, Mi kael ; Hml i nen, J ar i ; Luukka, Pasi ( Eds. )

1. Oper at i ons Resear ch

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